 The Environmental Crisis in ChinaLa crise environnementale en ChineJean-François Huchet ()
Post-Print from HAL Abstract: All indicators are red in terms of the environment in China: air, water and soil pollution, soil erosion, desertification, acid rain, waste management, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions ). All the books, reports and analyzes of the international organizations and Chinese are unanimous to highlight the severity of pollution problems in China. Even the Chinese authorities, who very often seek to mask the shadows of the country's economic success, now recognize that the country is going through a major environmental crisis. The worrying signs of the human and economic consequences of this environmental crisis are multiplying every day without any precise measurement of its full extent. The most successful and most serious studies (World Bank and the Ministry of the Environment of China) report an annual cost of pollution which, according to calculations and estimates, is between 5.8 and 8 % Of the country's annual GDP. Moreover, despite the fact that the Chinese population is the main victim of the degradation of the ecosystem, the evolution of the environmental situation in China is not only a national issue. Both Korea, Japan, Taiwan, are affected by air pollution from China. The Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region, which was reclaimed by the British to China in July 1997, has seen its levels of air pollution deteriorate alarmingly in the last two decades. Air pollution in China now regularly affects North America, especially during spring when sandstorms are most intense in northwestern China due to soil erosion and Desertification has accelerated since the early 1980s. China has also become the world's largest greenhouse gas emitting country (GHG), ahead of the United States in 2007. It is also projected, International energy agency, is responsible for almost three-quarters of global GHG growth by 2030. The magnitude of the ecosystem degradation in China is therefore Still need to be recalled, a global problem with important consequences for the planet's environmental future. The pace of growth of the Chinese middle class, the evolution of its consumption patterns, its political attitude towards environmental degradation are crucial data in the future evolution of global warming. The Government took note of this degradation belatedly. It was not until the early 2000s that serious and ambitious legislation was put in place to promote healthier and sustainable growth. At the political level, it was necessary to await the many episodes of "airpocalypse" in the Chinese capital during the winter of 2013, so that the government finally decided to strengthen and apply more seriously the environmental legislation that was largely ignored by the Producers. A race against time is therefore well underway between ambitious public policies on the environmental level and the continuing degradation of the ecosystem in China. Although it is still too early to judge recent public policies assisted by new political will, the many challenges posed by this environmental crisis are still far from being met. Despite genuine public policy efforts and significant advances in renewable energy, China is far from seeing the end of the tunnel. Indeed, the structural reasons which led it to this unprecedented environmental crisis in world economic history are far from being neutralized by public policies. For these reasons, demography, urbanization or energy dependence on coal will not change favorably for decades. Other structural factors, such as the various aspects of the mode of growth of the economy or the authoritarian nature of the political system, are gradually evolving, but too slowly to bring about a rapid improvement in the environmental situation. China is likely to continue to face a paradoxical situation in the years to come: it is both the world's largest laboratory and global investor in green energy, but also the largest consumer of coal in the world. In short, although China is at a turning point in its mode of economic growth (less growth and heavy industry and more services) and energy (peak consumption of coal), it will still be necessary to Long years before long-term sustainable growth can be achieved on an environmental basis. Keywords: China; environment; economy; political economy; environmental policies; air pollution; water pollution; urbanization; coal; renewable energies; Chine; environnement; économie; économie politique; politiques environnementales; pollution de l'air; pollution de l'eau; urbanisation; charbon; énergies renouvelables (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Presses de SciencesPo. Presses de SciencesPo, pp.160, 2016, 978-2-7246-1950-8 There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01421968 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Post-Print from HAL |
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