In China’s Yangtze industrial heartland, signs of growth without eco-damage
The in-depth study by researchers in China, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Britain and South Africa shows that signs of a decoupling, or separation, between economic growth and environmental degradation could be seen in China as early as the turn of this century.
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“We present compelling evidence of unprecedented decoupling signals between socio-economic growth and eco-environmental degradation, particularly in the last two decades” in the Taihu lake watershed, the researchers wrote in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in April.
“We cannot say with 100 per cent certainty whether this decoupling has entered a stable state or has just appeared,” Zhang Ke, study author and a researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in an interview. “We can’t predict the future. But for now, the signal is positive.”
Taihu, China’s third largest freshwater lake, is within the Yangtze River Delta, “one of the world’s most densely populated and intensively modified landscapes”, the researchers wrote.
“As a harbinger of China’s development, the Yangtze River Delta region has witnessed unprecedented social progress and economic prosperity accompanied by critical environmental degradation,” the paper said.
To study the watershed, the researchers drilled holes in Taihu to obtain mud cores, which they studied layer by layer to reveal the characteristics of the lake at different points in time – including evidence of heavy metal pollution and vegetation DNA.
Zhang said “organic, inorganic, living and inanimate things are collected into lake basins and buried” over time, which the team could “resurrect” by studying its contents.
They also obtained information on social and economic activity in the region through historical records, and used model simulation to determine climate characteristics, such as precipitation and temperature.
“At the heart of our own research is using the past to understand the future,” Zhang said.
The team found that before the 1950s, human activity did not cause long lasting damage to the Taihu watershed. Zhang said this was a “relatively harmonious time between man and nature”.
After the 1950s, China’s population and agriculture “developed intensively” with rapid social and economic development that peaked in the 1980s, he said.
“Typically, socioeconomic development is coupled to a heavily altered and degraded eco-environmental state,” the team wrote in the paper.
During this time period, the researchers said there was an “unprecedented acceleration in soil erosion, water eutrophication and ecosystem degradation”.
However, another major shift occurred in the Taihu watershed at the start of the 21st century.
“Around 2000, the economy was developing but the environment was not degrading, and some of the environment was even getting better,” Zhang said.
Their research indicated that some time between 2000 and 2010, a “decoupling signal” appeared between socio-economic growth and environmental degradation, he said.
The team observed that during this period, while there were still high levels of algae in the lake, it began to show a downward trend. They also found decreasing signs of erosion, and less plant DNA collected in the soil layers.
A report released this year by the Jiangsu provincial government, in which Taihu is located, said its water quality and algae levels had been at safe levels for the past 16 years, according to Jiangsu Economic News which is owned by the state-owned Xinhua Daily Group.
Although rapid environmental degradation in the region has stopped, and even started to reverse, from 2000 to 2020 the region’s gross domestic product increased eightfold, the paper said.
The transformation of the Taihu watershed was “unprecedented” because of China’s rapid economic and social development, Zhang said.
“From the time of reform and opening up to around 2000, China actually went through a process in 20 to 30 years that may have taken the West a hundred years” as they industrialised, Zhang said.
The phenomenon of decoupling in this region offers “insights not only for the Yangtze River Basin but also for regions worldwide grappling with similar sustainability challenges”, the team wrote.
In a manufacturing power index report released by the Chinese Academy of Engineering last year, the United States had a clear lead in first place while China – in fourth place – was rapidly catching up with Germany and Japan. China’s gap with Japan narrowed from nearly 32 index points in 2012 to just under 2 points in 2022.
With the help of policy, production around the Taihu watershed moved from low-end, high-energy consuming and polluting industries to higher-end manufacturing, Zhang said.
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Many of the country’s major industries are now concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta, including chip, electric vehicle, robot and battery manufacturers as well as software and artificial intelligence developers. Every 10 seconds, a new-energy vehicle is completed in this region, according to Xinhua.
Zhang said that what the Taihu watershed had and would experience could “represent at least some of the problems” countries might face in future. He said this could make the region an example for other countries seeking the type of economic growth that does not come at the expense of the environment.
Countries such as Germany and Japan have seen their own decoupling between carbon emissions and economic activity. The dissociation between emissions and rise in GDP has been steadily occurring since the 1990s in the European Union, and this century in Japan.
The International Energy Agency said China had begun to see its carbon emissions and GDP growth diverge this decade, and a decoupling could occur by the end of the decade.