In 2014, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Collaborative Development Strategy (hereinafter the Jing-Jin-Ji Strategy) was formally proposed as a major national strategy, providing an unprecedented opportunity ...for the overall development of Hebei. This article evaluates the treatment effects of the Jing-Jin-Ji Strategy on Hebei’s economy and environment. Employing a panel data program evaluation method developed by Hsiao et al. (
2012
), we construct hypothetical counterfactuals for the GDP growth rate, the percentage of tertiary industry in GDP, and the geographic mean PM
2.5
concentrations for Hebei in the absence of the Jing-Jin-Ji Strategy using the outcomes of selected untreated provinces. The results show that the Jing-Jin-Ji Strategy increased the percentage of tertiary industry in GDP by an average of 2.53 percentage points per year between 2014 and 2018 and decreased the geographic mean PM
2.5
concentrations by an average of 11.1 percentage points per year between 2014 and 2017. However, it does not appear to have had significant effects on Hebei’s GDP growth rate. The leave-one-out method demonstrates the robustness of the above results. This article suggests that Hebei should speed up its economic growth and bridge the gap with Beijing and Tianjin while ensuring the quality of its economic development and a sound ecological environment.
In recent years, with rapid urbanization, the underlying urban surface has changed dramatically. Various urban eco-environmental problems have emerged globally, among which the urban heat island ...effect has become one of the most obvious urban eco-environmental problems. In this study, Nanjing, China, was chosen as the study area. Based on Landsat 8 remote sensing image data collected in Nanjing from 2014 to 2018, land surface temperatures were retrieved, the spatiotemporal variation track and characteristics of the thermal environment pattern were systematically depicted, and the driving factors of these variations were revealed. The results show that over the past five years, the spatial pattern of the heat field in Nanjing changed from a scattered distribution in the periphery of the city to a centralized distribution in the centre of the city, and the heat island intensity increased annually. Changes in administrative divisions, changes in the layout of the transportation trunk lines, transfer of industrial centres, and ecological construction projects are important driving factors for the evolution of the land surface thermal environment patterns of these regions. These research results will provide scientific and technological support for similar cities with typical heat island effects elsewhere in the world to formulate urban development plan, and to improve the urban ecological environment.
Accurate assessment of wetland ecosystem carbon sinks is an estimation of future atmospheric CO2 concentrations, prediction of climate change and its impact on wetland ecosystems. In this study, ...using remote sensing data and 351 wetland sample sites in 2015, a remote sensing multiple linear regression model (RS-MLRM) was constructed to clarify the carbon storage capacity and its changing process from 2000 to 2015 and their controlling factors in arid regions wetlands. The results are as follows: (1) The studied wetlands acted as atmospheric carbon sinks from 2000 to 2015, increasing by 3.88 × 104 tC/a. Moreover, the soil carbon sink (0–40 cm) was approximately twice that of the vegetation carbon sink. (2) Carbon sinks had a clear spatial distribution, with high concentrations in Helan and Pingluo Counties in the central Ningxia Plain. From 2005 to 2015, constructed wetlands significantly increased the carbon sink (P < 0.05) and were the main contributors to carbon sequestration, indicating that positive human intervention enhances the carbon sink effect of wetlands. (3) Human activities, policy factors, soil physical and chemical properties and nutrients were the main factors affecting carbon sink in Ningxia Plain Wetland in arid regions. (4) The results provides a scientific basis for the protection and management of wetland ecosystems in arid areas.
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•We estimate carbon sinks in Ningxia Plain Wetland in arid areas.•We develop an accurate and applicable RS-MLRM for estimating carbon sinks.•Wetland carbon density increased significantly in Ningxia Plain from 2000 to 2015.•Human activity, policy were the main factors affecting carbon sink in arid areas.•These findings related to carbon cycling and environmental controls in arid areas.
Urban traffic is an important source of global CO2 emissions. Uncovering the temporal and structural characteristics can provide scientific support to identify the variation regulation and main ...subjects of urban traffic CO2 emissions. The road class is one of the most important factors influencing the urban traffic CO2 emissions. Based on the annual traffic field monitoring work in 2014 and the localized MOVES model, this study unravels the temporal variation and structural characteristics of the urban traffic CO2 emissions and conducts a comparative analysis of expressway (5R) and arterial road (DB), two typical classes of urban roads in Beijing. Obvious differences exist in the temporal variation characteristics of the traffic CO2 emissions between the expressway and arterial road at the annual, week and daily scales. The annual traffic CO2 emissions at the expressway (5R, with 47271.15 t) are more than ten times than those of the arterial road (DB, with 4139.19 t). Stronger weekly "rest effect" is observed at the expressway than the arterial road. The daily peak time and duration of the traffic CO2 emissions between the two classes of urban roads show significant differences particular in the evening peak. The differences of the structural characteristics between the two classes of urban roads are mainly reflected on the contribution of the public and freight transportation. Passenger vehicles play a predominant role at both the two classes of urban roads. The public transportation contributed more at DB (24.76%) than 5R (5.47%), and the freight transportation contributed more at 5R (23.41%) than DB (3.49%). The results suggest that the influence of traffic CO2 emissions on the CO2 flux is significant at the residential and commercial mixed underlying urban areas with arterial roads (DB) but not significant at the underlying urban park area with expressway (5R) in this study. The vegetation cover in urban areas have effects on the CO2 reduction. Increasing the design and construction of the green space along the urban roads with busy traffic flow will be an effective way to mitigate the urban traffic CO2 emissions and build the low-carbon cities.
This paper applies the panel unit root, heterogeneous panel cointegration and panel-based dynamic OLS to re-investigate the co-movement and relationship between energy consumption and economic growth ...for 30 provinces in mainland China from 1985 to 2007. The empirical results show that there is a positive long-run cointegrated relationship between real GDP per capita and energy consumption variables. Furthermore, we investigate two cross-regional groups, namely the east China and west China groups, and get more important results and implications. In the long-term, a 1% increase in real GDP per capita increases the consumption of energy by approximately 0.48–0.50% and accordingly increases the carbon dioxide emissions by about 0.41–0.43% in China. The economic growth in east China is energy-dependent to a great extent, and the income elasticity of energy consumption in east China is over 2 times that of the west China. At present, China is subject to tremendous pressures for mitigating climate change issues. It is possible that the GDP per capita elasticity of carbon dioxide emissions would be controlled in a range from 0.2 to 0.3 by the great effort.
•A composite method for assessing city-level progress of achieving SDGs was successfully constructed.•Both the SDG progress, driving forces, and simulation showed striking homogeneity and ...heterogeneity.•The effectiveness and barriers of RBCs to achieve SDGs are discussed.•Related suggestions for accelerating SDG progress across cities are provided.
Sustainable Urban development is an immortal challenge for the world, among which resource-based cities (RBCs) face more complex dilemmas due to their special characteristics. This determines that they are the key areas and difficult areas to achieve sustainable development. This study is oriented to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and constructs a research framework for sustainable development of resource-based cities based on the deconstruction of the SDGs of RBCs. A comprehensive sustainable development evaluation framework was constructed based on DPSIR-Entory, and ESDA and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) models were used to study the sustainability transition effects of RBCs. Based on this, a System Dynamics (SD) model was constructed to predict and simulate the future development of resource-based cities under different scenarios. The results indicated that (1) there is a significant spatial clustering of the sustainable transformation ability of RBCs. (2) different RBCs achieve sustainable development at different rates, and low-growth RBCs show a trend of shifting from the northwest region and the southwest region to the northeast region. (3) DPSIR has different promoting or inhibiting effects on enhancing the sustainable development impact of RBCs regions. (4) to attain sustainable development of RBCs, it is crucial to strike a balance in implementing policies within a multifaceted urban system. This study provides an in-depth analysis of the current situation, problems, opportunities and challenges of the transformation and sustainable development of RBCs nationwide and proposes countermeasures. In order to enhance the study of sustainable development of RBCs, it is of great practical significance for the national RBCs to break the resource curse dilemma and achieve sustainable development.
Copper-based mixed wastes include copper-containing wastes from the chemical, metallurgy, copper processing, printing, electronic component manufacturing, and other industries. Copper-based mixed ...wastes have high humidity and a significantly lower copper content than general waste copper, pose serious environmental hazards, and are very difficult to recover. The recycling of copper-based mixed wastes has important economic and environmental significance. Chinese companies have started extracting copper and other metals from copper-based waste mixtures and have achieved a high economic efficiency. This paper assesses the environmental impacts of copper-based mixed waste recycling and suggests possible optimization measures for the production process with respect to environmental impacts. The life cycle assessment (LCA) method is adopted to evaluate the effects of different production processes and to compare the environmental impacts of copper recovery from copper-based mixed waste recycling to the environmental impacts of primary and secondary copper production. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to estimate and evaluate the effects of possible production process optimization measures on environmental impacts. The results show the following: 1) The environmental impact of the copper-based mixed waste recovery process is generally superior to that of primary copper production in China on average, while it is inferior to that of secondary copper production. For example, the fossil energy consumption in primary copper production accounts for 74.9% of the impact of this process. 2) Smelting is the production process with the greatest environmental impact throughout the life cycle of copper-based mixed waste, accounting for 64.5% of the normalized index of the total environmental impact; and electrolysis and zinc recovery reach 19.8% and 12.1% of the total normalized index, respectively. 3) The raw materials and emission components with the largest environmental impacts are the carbon emissions from coal use and carbon dioxide emissions during smelting, the use of electricity during electrolysis, and the use of heavy oil and lime as raw materials during refining; these five items account for 69.7% of the total environmental impact. Thus, efforts at process improvement should focus on the full life cycle of energy utilization in the smelting process and on energy and material depletion in the refining and electrolysis processes. Specific process improvements and simulation analyses are important directions for further research.
•The impact of the copper-based mixed waste recovery process is generally superior to that of primary copper production in China on average.•Smelting is the production process with the greatest environmental impact.•Five input-output items account for 69.7% of the total environmental impact.
Due to interregional carbon emission (CE) transfer, the CE reduction allocation approach is crucial to the overall CE reduction effect. The prevalent allocation mode applies the production-based ...principle (PBP) and causes equity and efficiency losses of CE reduction. The exploration of a CE reduction policy under the consumption-based principle (CBP) is highly demanded. In this article, by studying the transfer of CEs embodied in interprovincial trade (CEs-PT) in 1997–2007 within China, we propose a CE reduction allocation approach under the CBP. We found that net CEs-PT were huge and had increased from 172.22 million tons (Mts.) to 425.94 Mts. The main transfer flow was from the resource-based provinces to the economically developed provinces, from North China to South China. Under the PBP, the transfer of CEs-PT caused serious equity and efficiency losses of CE reduction in China. Then, we propose a CE reduction allocation approach under the CBP that considers the long-term dynamic change of regional CEs. The approach can eliminate equity loss, improve CE reduction efficiency, and avoid the impact of short-term fluctuations of regional CEs. Based on this approach, we calculated China’s provincial CE reduction responsibility and found that compared with the allocation approach under the PBP, the CE reduction responsibility of most net exporters of CEs-PT decreased, while that of most net importers increased. To accomplish CE reduction efficiently and economically, we propose a CE reduction trading system. The research can provide support for CE reduction allocation policy and CE reduction trading system for China and other countries.
Mongolia is an important country in the Economic Corridor of China-Mongolia-Russia, a deep understanding of the coupling relationship between urbanization and the eco-environment in Mongolia is ...meaningful to achieve green development of the Belt and Road. The entropy method and coupling coordination degree model were integrated to evaluate the coupling coordination degree between urbanization and the eco-environment in Mongolia during 2000-2016. The results showed that the coupling coordination degree between urbanization and the eco-environment in Mongolia was generally at the stage of seriously unbalanced development, and that the main contributor of the urbanization and the eco-environment subsystem were demographic urbanization and eco-environment endowment, respectively. The southern part of Mongolia central zone should be paid more attention due to the lower degree of coupling coordination between urbanization and the eco-environment. To promote the healthy urbanization development in Mongolia, six-layer eco-city establishing green development pattern is proposed to provide scientific support for Mongolia.
There is a great health services disparity between urban and rural areas in China. The percentage of people who are unable to access health services due to long travel times increases. This paper ...takes Donghai County as the study unit to analyse areas with physician shortages and characteristics of the potential spatial accessibility of health services. We analyse how the unequal health services resources distribution and the New Cooperative Medical Scheme affect the potential spatial accessibility of health services in Donghai County. We also give some advice on how to alleviate the unequal spatial accessibility of health services in areas that are more remote and isolated.
The shortest traffic times of from hospitals to villages are calculated with an O-D matrix of GIS extension model. This paper applies an enhanced two-step floating catchment area (E2SFCA) method to study the spatial accessibility of health services and to determine areas with physician shortages in Donghai County. The sensitivity of the E2SFCA for assessing variation in the spatial accessibility of health services is checked using different impedance coefficient valuesa. Geostatistical Analyst model and spatial analyst method is used to analyse the spatial pattern and the edge effect of potential spatial accessibility of health services.
The results show that 69% of villages have access to lower potential spatial accessibility of health services than the average for Donghai County, and 79% of the village scores are lower than the average for Jiangsu Province. The potential spatial accessibility of health services diminishes greatly from the centre of the county to outlying areas. Using a smaller impedance coefficient leads to greater disparity among the villages. The spatial accessibility of health services is greater along highway in the county.
Most of villages are in underserved health services areas. An unequal distribution of health service resources and the reimbursement policies of the New Cooperative Medical Scheme have led to an edge effect regarding spatial accessibility of health services in Donghai County, whereby people living on the edge of the county have less access to health services. Comprehensive measures should be considered to alleviate the unequal spatial accessibility of health services in areas that are more remote and isolated.
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