Environmental responsibility for sulfur dioxide emissions and associated biodiversity loss across Chinese provinces

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed a growing volume in Chinese interregional trade, along with the increasing disparities in environmental pressures. This has prompted an increased attention on where the responsibilities for environmental impacts should be placed. In this paper, we quantify the environmental responsibility of SO 2 emissions and biodiversity impacts due to terrestrial acidification at the provincial level for the first time. We examine the environmental responsibility from the perspectives of production, consumption, and income generation by employing a Multi-Regional Input-Output (MRIO) model for 2007, 2010, and 2012. The results indicate that ~40% of SO 2 emissions were driven by the consumption in provinces other than where the emissions discharged. In particular, those developed provinces were net importers of SO 2 emissions and mainly outsourced their emissions to nearby developing provinces. Over the period of analysis, environmental inequality among 30 provinces was larger than GDP inequality. Furthermore, environmental inequality continued to increase while GDP inequality decreased over the time period. The results of a shared income-and consumption-based responsibility approach suggest that the environmental responsibility of SO 2 emissions and biodiversity impacts for developed provinces can reach up to ~4-to 93-fold the environmental pressure occurred within those provinces. This indicates that under these accounting principles the developed northern provinces in China would bear a much larger share of the environmental responsibility. Capsule: We calculate the shared responsibilities for SO 2 emissions in China and find them to differ significantly from the production-based reduction targets set by governments.

Provincial and sector-level material footprints in China

“…The embodied interprovincial material transfer within China is almost equal to the total MF of the United States (at 9.8 Gt [https://www.resourcepanel.org/global-material-flows-database]). On a provincial level, we find similar MF patterns as those between countries at the global scale (7–10) and provincial-level footprint studies for carbon, PM2.5, and SO 2 (11–15): material demands in affluent areas are supported by extraction and production in less-developed areas. There are 12 provinces, located mainly along the coasts, which are net national and international MF importers (Fig.…”

“…Material outsourcing patterns also show large material leakages as the virtual flow almost always runs from regions with a high material intensity to areas with a low intensity (compare Figs. 2 B and 3) (12, 13).…”

“…The same phenomenon can happen within countries. For instance, within China the developed coastal regions import resources and environmental damage from the less developed western and central provinces (11–15). A comparative analysis of how regions with different levels of development within countries drive resource use would provide considerable insight into how resource efficiency can be improved (7, 8).…”

Consumption-based carbon accounting: sense and sensibility

“…This insight has led to proposals for mixed approaches in which some form of responsibility sharing is suggested. Rodrigues et al (2006) and Qian, Behrens, Tukker, Rodrigues, and Scherer (2019) use the average of consumption-based and income-based emissions. Kander et al (2015) propose a 'technologically corrected' consumption-based approach.…”

Identifying Driving Factors of Jiangsu’s Regional Sulfur Dioxide Emissions: A Generalized Divisia Index Method

“…The results suggested that high demand is the main factor contributing to sulfur dioxide emissions in energy supply. Qian et al [17] pointed out that developed provinces needed to undertake enormous environmental responsibility, which led to the fact that they mainly outsourced their sulfur dioxide emissions to nearby developing provinces. Taking sulfur dioxide emissions as an example, Wang et al [18] explored the pollution haven hypothesis in domestic trade for the first time, and found that little evidence supported that this phenomenon existed in China over 2007–2012.…”