Scholars analyze how regulations, low-carbon energy, and green economic growth affect sustainable development.
For the past two decades, many nations have favored economic growth at the cost of the environment. Now, as climate change impacts worsen and threaten more of the world, many nations are turning to sustainable development, which environmental scholars define as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Although sustainable development is theoretically a solution to climate change, many scholars are studying how it can effectively be achieved in practice. In a recent article, Mucahit Aydin of Turkey’s Sakarya University and several coauthors analyze how command and control-based environmental regulations, low-carbon energy, and green economic growth affect sustainable development in the world’s largest polluter—China.
Aydin and his coauthors note that the United States, India, the European Union, and China are the biggest global polluters. Of these four nations, China is the largest contributor to climate change and has done the least to counteract it, explains the Aydin team.
In the name of sustainable development, China has announced its lofty goals of reaching its peak carbon emissions rate by 2030 and reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2060. Aydin and his coauthors seek to determine whether the policies China is enacting to further these goals can actually meet them by studying the efficacy of China’s command and control-based environmental regulations, its green economic growth, and its use of low-carbon energy sources.
The Aydin team explains that environmental regulations can often be categorized into one of two types—market-based regulations, such as a tax on the use of carbon, or command and control-based regulations, such as a hard cap on the amount of emissions a power plant can produce. Aydin and his coauthors note that although China used to rely more heavily on market-based environmental regulations, in recent years command and control-based environmental regulations have become its dominant structure.
They further explain that previous studies have shown conflicting results about whether command and control-based environmental regulations lead to sustainable development.
Green economic growth is a metric that combines economic development and environmental protection by evaluating resource efficiency, pollution control, and environmental protection, explains the Aydin team. They further note that green economic growth can be measured through a country’s investments in green technology and environmentally conscious trade, and that it serves as an indicator for sustainable development.
Aydin and his coauthors consider low-carbon energy to include forms of renewable energy as well as nuclear energy. Although they acknowledge the need to develop low-carbon energy, they explain that low-carbon energy is not a sufficient replacement for sustainable development as focusing solely on increasing the amount of low-carbon energy produced can have negative consequences in other aspects of the economy.
Although studies on each of these three factors have been done individually, very few studies have looked at how they interact to produce sustainable development, notes the Aydin team. Furthermore, most studies have been done on small regional scales, and their generalized applicability is questionable, explain Aydin and his coauthors.
They address these concerns by evaluating all three factors throughout China over a 30-year period. The Aydin team found that command and control-based environmental regulation efficiently promoted green activities and decreased carbon emissions. They argue that, in conjunction with promoting low-carbon energy, a country can create a successful plan for sustainable development.
Aydin and his coauthors discovered that green economic growth acted as a catalyst on top of the other two factors for improving sustainable development.
They argue that, based on these results, public policies should be constructed around creating targets for, and encouraging the adoption of, low-carbon energy sources while setting limits on carbon dioxide emissions. They state that if taken, these steps will promote green activities and foster green economic growth, which their study shows is intrinsically linked to sustainable development.
Aydin and his coauthors put forth three different types of environmental regulations that, when combined, they argue will lead to the most efficient sustainable development.
The first type of regulation the Aydin team suggests are technology-based regulations aimed at developing clean technologies and energy. They recommend government sponsored research and development of these technologies, as well as specific support for the adoption of wind and solar energy.
The second type of regulation Aydin and his coauthors propose are market-based regulations, such as environmental taxes, carbon taxes, and renewable energy certificates.
Finally, they recommend command and control-based regulations, such as banning, restricting, or requiring certain activities to comply with specific standards. The Aydin team further notes that this strategy needs both regulations and inspections and enforcement to be viable.
