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Given that compensation for ecological and economic benefits is an effective way to address the imbalance between the coordinated development of regional ecological environment and economic growth, this study aims to explore the horizontal ecological compensation mechanism under the differentiated responsibilities of different regions in China. In...
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El concepto de desarrollo sostenible del Informe Brundtland (1987) se ha convertido en la noción rectora para la gobernanza ambiental internacional, recuperando al crecimiento económico como el hecho que cura todos los males. Todos los informes sobre sostenibilidad alegan que no existe conflicto entre crecimiento, justicia social y protección ambie...
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... Cheng & Li 2021). In addition, there is research that finds an inverted U-shaped relationship between ecological environment and economic development (Xi & Jing 2021). ...
Many countries attach great importance to the green, low-carbon, and circular development of industrial parks. China is one of them and has entered an exploration journey of national demonstration eco-industrial parks (NDEIPs). However, the impact of the transformation of industrial parks into NDEIPs on local economic development still remains a mystery. To address this issue, we develop an empirical study using a combination of the multi-period difference-in-differences method and the propensity score matching method based on the panel data for 266 cities in China from 2001 to 2021. The results show that industrial parks becoming NDEIPs promotes cities’ economic development. This conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests, such as the reverse causality test and the placebo test. Moreover, the park heterogeneity tests show that the economic consequences vary according to differences in levels, industry types, life cycle phases, and the degree of foreign firm agglomeration. The city heterogeneity tests show that the economic consequences differ based on administrative levels, innovation capabilities, technology industrialization, and environmental friendliness. The spatial heterogeneity tests show that the economic consequences differ according to geographical location and whether situated in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The policy upgrading heterogeneity tests show that the economic consequences differ during the process of policy upgrading and transformation. In addition, the mechanism tests reveal that green innovation, human capital level, and firm attractiveness mediate the relationship between industrial parks becoming NDEIPs and cities’ economic development. This study provides a new perspective for understanding the economic effects of the transformation of industrial parks into NDEIPs, and provides a reference for the government on how to maximize these economic effects.
... Studies have demonstrated that ecological compensation mechanisms successfully promote cooperative and balanced growth between upstream and downstream regions in the river basins (Xi and Jing 2021). ...
Transboundary water pollution induced by inter-regional trade is a complex and challenging issue due to the multiple jurisdictions involved. This study combined water pollution discharge inventory, multi-regional input–output analysis, discharge responsibility-sharing, and ecological compensation model to advance the collaborative control of water pollution embodied in China’s inter-provincial trade. Over a fifth of China’s water pollution discharges in 2017, equivalent to 1376 Kt, were a result of inter-provincial trade, which primarily flowed from wealthier coastal provinces to less developed ones. Moreover, the analysis demonstrates a mismatch between economic gains and environmental costs. In particular, Jiangxi and Guangxi bear the greatest environmental impact (64 and 58 Kt, respectively) while only receiving meager economic returns (131 and 80 billion Yuan). The economic benefit shared responsibility results for the great majority of provinces fell between production- and consumption-based discharges, and this compromise-based allocation of responsibility is more likely to gain acceptance across various regions. Provinces such as Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Beijing necessitate the highest compensation volumes to others, with 31 Kt, 25 Kt, and 20 Kt, respectively, while provinces including Guangxi, Jiangxi, and Ningxia require the largest inflows of compensation, totaling 26 Kt, 23 Kt, and 18 Kt, respectively. The compensation outcomes ensure that less developed regions, bearing a greater pollution burden, receive compensation from more developed regions with lower pollution burdens. The compensation values aligned with compensation volumes, with a few exceptions driven by variations in shadow prices of water pollution. Our study sheds light on the inter-provincial water pollution burdens and benefits and provides a quantitative basis for optimizing the responsibility-sharing and compensation strategies in China, thereby promoting regional cooperation on water pollution control.
... For the compensation methods for air pollution control, the most important way to carry out ecological compensation nationwide is the financial transfer payments and incentives from higher-level governments to lower-level governments, and the compensation process is dominated by vertical transfer compensation, with less horizontal interprovincial transfer compensation, which only plays a subordinate supporting role (Xi and Jing 2021). In recent years, due to the continuous improvement of China's environmental governance system, the ecological compensation method has gradually changed from vertical ecological compensation to horizontal inter-governmental compensation (Yang et al. 2022c). ...
Establishing a reasonable cost-sharing and compensation mechanism for air pollution control is a prerequisite for realizing inter-regional cooperative treatment. Taking inter-provincial sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions in China from 2005 to 2019 as the research object, this paper proposes a data-driven approach to establish a cost-sharing index system of regional SO2 treatment in four dimensions and construct a cost-sharing and compensation scheme using the entropy-TOPSIS method. The results revealed that there are significant spatial and temporal differences in the treatment cost of SO2 emission, and the total SO2 treatment costs at the national level increased first and then decreased during the study period, meanwhile, the regional SO2 treatment costs are much higher in the less economically developed regions such as the central and western regions than in economically developed eastern coastal regions. The design of the cost-sharing and compensation mechanism of SO2 treatment should consider the regional differences in abatement capacity, abatement potential, abatement responsibility, and development demands. The economically developed regions should share higher treatment costs according to their historical cumulative abatement responsibilities, and provide economic compensation and technical support to the less economically developed regions. Specifically, the marginal abatement cost in the more economically developed eastern region is much higher than that in the less economically developed central and western areas due to their large abatement responsibility and strong reduction capacity but insufficient abatement potential, so the eastern regions can transfer part of their abatement responsibility to the central and western regions using economic compensation. Reasonable cost sharing and horizontal compensation can help promote regional cooperation and synergistic management in air pollution abatement. Finally, corresponding policy recommendations are given to provide a decision basis for cross-regional cooperation in air pollution control.
... The survival of human beings and the development of society and economy depend on the sustainable supply of ecosystem (Xi and Jing 2021). Inevitably, economic activities accelerate the consumption of natural resources and seriously harm the environment's ecological balance. ...
How to raise the ecological compensation fund for the Yellow River Basin is one of the key difficulties for executing the ecological compensation mechanism and ensuring the high-quality development of the entire basin. This paper, which is based on systems theory, analyzes the social-economic-ecological compound system of the Yellow River Basin. It makes the point that the goals of human-water harmony, ecological compensation efficiency improvement, and coordinated regional development should be achieved in raising ecological compensation funds. Guided by the raising targets, a two-layer fundraising model based on efficiency and fairness is constructed for ecological compensation. The upper-level model is built to calculate the ecological compensation efficiency of each compensation subject from an input–output perspective. The initial fundraising scheme was further determined to implement the efficiency principle. Within the framework of sustainable development theory, the lower-level model adheres to the fairness principle based on efficiency. The social-economic development level of the compensation subject is considered to discriminate and optimize the initial scheme. Additionally, the two-layer model was utilized to conduct an empirical analysis with the data of the Yellow River Basin from 2013 to 2020. The results show that the optimized fundraising scheme is in line with the actual development level of the Yellow River Basin. This study can provide a reference for the fundraising of horizontal ecological compensation and promote the sustainable development of the whole basin.
... Most of the villagers in the remaining villages mainly rely on agricultural economy, while a small number of villagers choose to work in nearby village enterprises. This economic structure led to the local people's lack of awareness of the hazards of heavy metal pollution, and even many people were employed in sewage enterprises, resulting in the phenomenon of shelter and illegal pollution, which affected the restoration of heavy metal contaminated farmland [38]. ...
In recent years, the development of industrialization has led to heavy metal pollution in many agricultural areas in China. The excessive heavy metals in farmland not only affect the normal growth of crops, but also do great harm to human health, which seriously restricts the development of ecology and food health in China. In order to improve the problem of heavy metal pollution in rural areas, the current situation of heavy metal pollution in rural areas is analyzed based on the innovative ecological compensation mechanism for remediation, and the external theory, public goods theory and other relevant theories are combined to obtain the ecological compensation strategy for heavy metal farmland soil remediation, and on this basis, the basic framework of ecological compensation for metal farmland remediation is constructed. Finally, effective environmental treatment suggestions are put forward according to the development requirements of ecological compensation in heavy metal farmland areas. The case study shows that different ecological restoration schemes have been adopted for a heavy metal farmland pollution area, and the environment has been improved according to the ecological compensation scheme. The total amount of ecological compensation for heavy metal farmland is CNY 32.35 million, of which the cost of seriously polluted farmland is the highest among the environmental values, with the cost of restoration per acre of CNY 65,000, indicating that the heavy metal areas are more expensive and have more obvious impact on the environment. The research content has important reference significance for the ecological environment treatment of heavy metal farmland pollution areas in China.
... Burdon et al. (2022) constructed a new stakeholder-driven participatory mapping approach to analyze the logical relationship between stakeholders and natural capital from multiple perspectives. Xi and Jing (2021) used the ecological footprint method to distinguish ecological deficit areas from ecological surplus areas and found that eastern China was mostly classified as an ecological deficit area, while central and western China were mostly classified as an ecological surplus area. However, identifying the location of protected areas and beneficiary areas for ecosystem services, as well as identifying those who use and protect them, remain key challenges in the field (Bagstad et al., 2013). ...
Defining a reasonable and feasible watershed ecological compensation threshold is the key to protecting watershed ecological functions and maintaining the sustainable utilization of watershed ecosystems. However, many studies have obtained compensation values that are too high to promote the implementation of ecological compensation policies. This study chose the upper reaches of the Yangtze River as the research area, taking water resources closer to people’s daily needs as the evaluation object. Based on the InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs) model and grey water footprint method, the ecological compensation threshold model for water resources was established. Combined with the eco-compensation priority sequence coefficient identification of protected areas and beneficiary areas and allowed for the measurement of the watershed ecological compensation value in 2015 and 2020. Finally, compare the advantages and disadvantages of different ecological compensation calculation methods, compare the gap between different watershed ecological compensation standards and the theoretical threshold globally. The results showed that from 2015 to 2020, the value of the water content in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River increased, while the value of the grey water footprint decreased. The classified watershed ecological compensation beneficiary areas were mainly concentrated in the central-eastern and southern parts of the upper Yangtze River, while the ecological compensation protected areas were concentrated in the western and northwestern parts. The mean absolute values of the watershed ecological compensation thresholds for each prefecture-level city and state ranged from 0.43 to 24.63 billion CNY in 2015 and from 0.67 to 41.60 billion CNY in 2020, which were close to the actual values. Among the different land-use types, the water conservation service value per unit area of shrubs was the highest. The lower limit value of watershed ecological compensation calculated using the grey water footprint method was closer to the amount of compensation in practice than was the commonly used opportunity cost method. The findings of the study can help improve the watershed ecological compensation mechanism in the upper Yangtze River region, promote win–win cooperation among transboundary watershed areas, and form a harmonious and stable green development model.
... The low eco-environmental quality area (L-L) is classified as the management area, requiring multi-layer and intensive treatments such as ecological rehabilitation. The government should develop the corresponding protective strategies to motivate and compensate the coal mines by implementing eco-environmental protection policies 55 . Also, coal enterprises should control the intensity of land utilization and building density, and strengthen green infrastructure design, for example, filling topsoil cracks and growing special plants with drought tolerance since developed roots to prevent water and soil erosion. ...
The contradiction between the exploitation of coal resources and the protection of the ecological environment in western China is becoming increasingly prominent. Reasonable ecological environment evaluation is the premise for alleviating this contradiction. First, this paper evaluates the eco-environment of Ibei coalfield by combining the genetic projection pursuit model and geographic information system (GIS) and using remote sensing image data and other statistical data of this area. The powerful spatial analysis function of GIS and the advantages of the genetic projection pursuit model in weight calculation have been fully used to improve the reliability of the evaluation results. Furthermore, spatial autocorrelation is used to analyze the spatial characteristics of ecological environment quality in the mining area and plan the specific governance scope. The geographic detector is used to determine the driving factors of the eco-environment of the mining area. The results show that Ibei Coalfield presents a spatially heterogeneous eco-environment pattern. The high-intensity mining area (previously mined area of Ili No.4 Coal Mine) has the worst ecological environment quality, followed by the coal reserve area of Ili No.4 Coal Mine and the planned survey area of Ili No.5 Coal Mine. The eco-environment quality (EEQ) of the study area is affected by both human and natural factors. Mining intensity and surface subsidence are the main human factors affecting the ecological environment in the study area. The main natural factors affecting the ecological environment in the study area are annual average precipitation, elevation, annual average evaporation, NDVI and land use type. Meanwhile, the interaction effect of any two indicators is greater than that of a single indicator. It is also indicated that the eco-environment of the mining area is nonlinearly correlated to impact indicators. The spatial autocorrelation analysis shows three areas that should be treated strategically that are the management area, close attention area and protective area. Corresponding management measures are put forward for different regions. This paper can provide scientific references for mining area eco-environmental protection, which is significant for the sustainability of coal mine projects.
... On the one hand, some methods only consider the ecological factors and ignored the economic and social factors. As the formulation of ECS requires comprehensive consideration of factors such as regional economic and social development, environmental resource abundance and distribution, the lack of these relevant factors in the EC mechanism will limit the sustainable development of the ecological environment and hinder the high-quality economic development [39]. Therefore, the ECS should fully consider the ecological, social and economic factors in the formulation, reflecting the differences [40,41]. ...
Ecological compensation (EC) is an important way to solve the imbalance of cross-regional economic development and realize regional coordinated development. How to quantify the standard of EC has become a hot research topic. Firstly, this paper selected the Three Gorges Reservoir Region (TGRR) as the study area, and constructed a cross-regional spillover ecological value measurement model based on the extended emergy analysis. From the perspective of the “ecology–economy–society” complex ecosystem, this paper used emergy to reflect the social, economic, and ecological function and service value of the TGRR, and estimated the ecosystem emergy supply and consumption in the TGRR. Then, comparing the watershed ecosystem emergy supply and consumption, we can judge the status of the ecological surplus and deficit of the TGRR, and transfer the spillover ecological emergy to spillover ecological value (SEV) by using the emergy currency ratio (ECR). Finally, combined with different actual payment level coefficient, we can obtain a relatively objective and robust compensation standard. The results show that the SEV of the TGRR in 2016 is 2.70 × 1011 USD, which indicates that the TGRR is in the state of ecological surplus. The TGRR should get EC about 2.85 × 1011 USD according to the ECR. Based on the research results, it is suggested to expand the transfer payment to the TGRR. At the same time, it is suggested to formulate different ecological compensation standard (ECS) according to regional differences, which has important practical significance to establish the allocation standard of EC, and provides a typical case basis for other large reservoir areas or typical reservoir areas.
... The low eco-environmental quality area (L-L) is classi ed as the management area, requiring multi-layer and intensive treatments such as ecological rehabilitation. The government should design the corresponding protective strategies to motivate and compensate the coal mines implementing ecoenvironmental protection policies 37 . Also, coal enterprises should control the intensity of land utilisation and building density, and strengthen green infrastructure design by, for example, lling topsoil cracks and growing special plants with drought tolerance and developed roots to prevent water and soil erosion. ...
Eco-environmental evaluation is a prerequisite for balancing the relationship between coal resource recovery and eco-environmental protection. This paper divides the eco-environment system in coal mining area into 5 subsystems regarding geomorphology, climate, hydrology, land and vegetation, and human activity. Within the 5 subsystems, 13 indicators capable of reflecting eco-environment levels of coal mine fields are selected, weighed using genetic projection pursuit model, and applied to eco-environmental quality evaluation. Based on this, the spatial feature of the quality is analysed using spatial autocorrelation method, recognising the areas that need managements. Factors driving the eco-environment characteristics of coal mines are identified using geographic detector. The feasibility of the developed evaluation system is verified with Ibei Coalfield as a case. The results show that Ibei Coalfield sees a spatially heterogeneous eco-environment pattern. Geographic detector can quantify the impact of various indicators on ecological environment, and the indicator is of stronger interpretation ability as interacting with others. It is also indicated that mining area eco-environment is nonlinearly correlated to impact indicators. The spatial autocorrelation analysis suggests three areas that should be treated strategically, that are the management area, close attention area and protective area. This paper can provide scientific references for mining area eco-environmental protection, which is significant for the sustainability of coal mine projects.
... For example, Xie et al. [16] found that China's economic growth has an inverted U-shaped impact on PM2.5 concentrations. Similarly, Xi and Jing [17] analyzed the evolution of ecological deficits and surplus areas and their per capita coal consumption in 30 provinces in China, and the results demonstrated that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the ecological environment and economic growth in each region. However, Wang et al. [18] proved an N-shaped relationship between CO2 emissions and economic growth in the same region. ...
Environmental protection is the core of sustainable economic development, and environmental policy plays a key role in achieving protection goals. Therefore, it is extremely crucial to evaluate the effectiveness of environmental policies. Existing studies mainly focus on the average impact of environmental policies on environmental pollution but ignore their dynamic impact, which is prone to misestimate the effect of environmental policies. To make up for the deficiency, a semiparametric additive panel data model is used to explore the dynamic impact of China’s sewage charging policy on environmental performance at each level of the levy. The results show that the relationship between sewage charge level and environmental degeneration is an “M-shaped” pattern, indicating that the current sewage charge policy is not absolutely effective. Moreover, the results also reveal an “N-shaped” linkage between economic growth and environmental pollution, indicating that economic development is not sustainable. Moreover, the factors of energy consumption, population growth, and industrialization contribute to increasing environmental degeneration. Although technological development has a positive impact on environmental performance, its impact is insignificant. This study could provide new evidence for strengthening environmental regulatory reform and promoting green economic development.
