Green connection to the world: Building regional responsible sustainable development strategies

Abstract

Green development and solutions to environmental problems rely on local conditions and green connections between regions during their development. However, it is less understood whether a region's emission of carbon and pollutants is moderate compared to its development. The study proposes the ‘green connection of regional development’ concept from the consumption perspective to enhance the understanding and measurement of regional capacity towards green development and responsible production and consumption. Data envelopment analysis was performed to evaluate the local and embodied emissions of eight pollutants for 30 provinces in China from 2012 to 2017. Twenty provinces had optimal capacity of green growth within the region and 15 had an optimal green connection of regional development. Suboptimal levels of overall green growth and green connection of regional development efficiencies were due to insufficient pure technical and scale efficiency levels, with a stronger impact of the former.