Chinese City Clusters Are Struggling to Curb Environmental Degradation

Finchannel.com reports:

Some Chinese city clusters have ranked poorly in a new report measuring the sustainable development capabilities of 100 Chinese cities.
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“China’s city clusters are struggling to prevent the spread of resource depletion and environmental degradation from mega cities to smaller urban centers, according to a new research report by Accenture and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The study also shows how digital technologies can support sustainable urban development.”

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“The report focuses on the sustainable performance of city clusters, a priority of regional economic development policy. It finds that although economic development has flowed from mega cities to smaller urban centers within clusters, so too has environmental degradation, contrary to policymakers’ expectations. The report notes that this is especially the case when mega cities have not yet completed their transition to New Resource Economy growth models and have insufficient capabilities that limit their environmental sustainability improvement to their own boundaries.

Of the five major city clusters, the Pearl River Delta area and Yangtze River Delta enjoy satisfactory overall performance but have the greatest gap between the economic growth and their resource and environmental sustainability; the Chengdu-Chongqing area and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River need to further develop high value-added industries while attaching importance to environmental protection; and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area face the most pressing resource and environmental challenges.”

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