Environmental impacts of China's WTO-accession

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• 作者：Haakon Vennemo ; Kristin Aunan ; Jianwu He ; Tao Hu ; Shantong Li ; Kristin Rypd3al
• 关键词：WTO ; Trade ; Environment ; China ; CGE-model ; Ancillary benefits
• 刊名：Ecological Economics
• 出版年：2008
• 出版时间：1 February 2008
• 年：2008
• 卷：64
• 期：4
• 页码：893-911
• 全文大小：519 K

文摘

China's accession to the WTO in 2001 completed the country's entry into the global economy. We investigate environmental implications of WTO-accession. There are several hypotheses in this area: The scale hypothesis says that production is scaled up and in turn, pollution increases. The technique hypothesis says that production methods become cleaner and pollution decreases. The composition hypothesis says that composition of industries changes and pollution reflects the new composition. We analyse the relative strength of the hypotheses by means of an environmental CGE-model, and in the case of air pollution find support for a composition effect in favour of clean industries. Thanks to the composition effect, emissions to air of greenhouse gases fall. Emissions of particles and SO₂ also fall, but emissions of NO_x and VOC rise. Since particle and SO₂-emissions fall we estimate that public health improves.