By Yang Kaizhong, professor of Institute of Government Administration, and president of Chinese Association of Regional Sciences, and Mr. Professor of New York State University
As stated in the Zhuhai Declaration, the harmonious coexistence between the mankind and the nature, and the virtuous cycle among population, resources and environment can provide a good climate for a steady economic growth and guarantee the sustainable development of the world economy.
The mankind is a part of the earth's complicated ecological system. The environment is the basis for satisfying mankind's needs as it not only offers natural resources for mankind's social production but also gives the mankind service of life support. However, some natural resources are virtually depleted as a result of human's long years of plundering development and exploitation of the environment. Environmental pollution and ecological damage have constituted a serious threat to human existence and development. Following the 1992 Rio Summit, countries and regions worldwide take it as an important agenda and strategy to realize sustainable development by harmonizing environment and development. Nonetheless, as indicated by the comprehensive report on the global environment issued by UNEP in Paris in 2002, the global environment over the past 10 years is deteriorating. Efforts to improve the environment are being neutralized by the growing demand for commodities and services as a result of economic development. Natural disasters caused by environmental degradation incurred a total loss of US $ 608 billion, an equivalent of that over the previous 40 years. Therefore, the mankind's sustained survival and development can be realized only when the economic growth and environment are virtuously harmonized instead of the other way around.
An improved environment can help increase productivity, promote human health and comfort and facilitate economic development. The other way around, a degraded environment would lower productivity, damage human heath and comfort and endanger economic development. Therefore, in essence, environmental protection is a part of economic development. To protect environment and seek sustainable development is not intended to exclude economic development but rather to include the environment protection into the framework of economic development and transform the mode of economic growth. The traditional economic development was based on the substantial exploitation of natural resources from the environment and huge discharge of waste into the environment. This mode of economic growth, if continued, will surely further environmental degradation globally and destroy the foundation for the sustainable development of the mankind. Therefore, all countries and regions should take concerted actions to restructure and reform the old economic development modality. Efforts should be made to formulate a new modality for economic growth from the perspectives of human's basic demand, knowledge and cycle economies, South-North economic relations, which are favorable for sustainable development. The new modality should detach, to the maximum degree, the input of natural resources from the environmental pollution.
Poverty is a major source for environmental degradation. On the one hand, the poor, to make a living, have to repeat their plundering exploitation of the environmental resources, which results in environmental deterioration. The productivity is thus decreased and the poor population's health damaged. The poor people become poorer and can hardly make their ends meet. On the other hand, the poor population, whole only capital is labor force, wish to reproduce more children partly as a result of their mindset of "more children more happiness". This leads to high growth rate and bigger population, which will ultimately cause further poverty. As a matter of fact, poverty is usually the most fundamental cause for poverty in many developing countries or regions, where people live in a vicious cycle of poverty, excessive population growth and environmental deterioration. Economic development is the only way out. To realize sustainable development, the mankind should, in the course of world economic development, takes it as a basic strategy to, meet basic human needs, help the poor develop economy and seek economic prosperity.
The traditional economy is based on big input of natural resources. Different from the traditional economy, the knowledge economy is based on the production, extension and application of knowledge. It inevitably means less consumption of natural resources and less environmental pollution. Therefore it should be an important orientation and content for different countries and regions' strategy for sustainable development to change the traditional economy for knowledge economy. All the countries and regions worldwide should seize the opportunity brought about by the new technology revolution and take it as a great strategy to develop the nation and region by virtue of the knowledge economy. To this end, all the countries and regions should invest in the knowledge. Investment can be made to increase the labor force's skills, renovate the infrastructure, recreate government and digit government, promote the growth of digit economy and non-governmental cooperation.
As the economic system is a part of the complicated ecological system, economic growth should respect more the ecological principle. A reasonable cycle process of "resources-products-regenerated resources" should be formed in the course of production and consumption for the purpose of a reasonable use of all the raw materials and energy in the continuously on-going economic cycle. The impact by the human economic activities on the environment in this way can be minimized and the ecological economic development favorable to the earth can be ultimately realized. The cycle economy, an economy respecting and applying the ecological laws, is based on a close-end process of "resource application -green products-resource regeneration". It has become and ought to be an important trend for the world economic development in the 21st century. For the purpose of sustainable development, countries and regions all over the world should adapt themselves to and get a good command of this trend by making efforts to change the " resources-products-pollutants discharge" economy into the " resources application-green products-resource regeneration" economy. To this end, efforts should be made: 1) to minimize the depleting exploitation of resources, that cannot be regenerated, by virtue of clean production; to reduce as much as possible the usage of resources in both production and consumption by using alternative resources that can be regenerated; 2) to maximize the resource use efficiency by extending the transformation period of " products--waste" by virtue of intensive division of labor and high-efficiency cooperation among different industrial groups; to diversify and maximize the ways and times of product usage so as to effectively expand the products' service time; transform the waste into " resources"; 3) to minimize waste discharge an make them harmless by increasing level of green technology, recycling the waste, making waste into resources on a multiple-level basis and realizing a virtuous close-end cycle of resources; 4) to optimize the economic system by restructuring and transforming the industries in line with the whole process of industry chain; to transform the economic regime into an ecological regime which can provide high quality products and functional service by using natural resources in a friendly way and increasing the environmental capacity; to realize sustainable development on the condition of optimizing the economic and environmental efficiencies; 5) to provide legal guarantee for developing the traditional economy into a cycle economy by establish it as a basic requirement for economic legislation to reduce and restructure waste and make waste harmless or into resources; 6) to promote clean production, green production and consumption; 7) to make more publicity about cycle economy so as to establish in the society the concept of cycle economy and develop social ethics of green products and consumption, environment-friendliness and renewed use of resources.
An environment-friendly new international economic order shall be set up in order to harmonize the world economic development and environmental protection and promote the sustainable development of human kind. The earth is shared by the mankind. Therefore, people of all the countries are entitled to use the earth's natural resources and in the meantime they shoulder due responsibilities and obligations for protecting the environment. The question of environment is a question left over by the long process of the development of the global society. The developed countries should take more responsibilities and obligations as they enjoy a longer history of development and thus enjoy bigger share of natural resources in per-capita terms. The developed, therefore, in the meantime of transforming their own economies into knowledge and cycle economies, should help the developing countries realize economic development in the framework of economic and environmental harmonization by providing assistance to the developing countries. In this process, the multinationals from the developed countries should shoulder their responsibilities and obligations by providing to the best of their abilities environment friendly technologies to the developing countries so as to help them develop sustainable economy. The developed countries, when giving assistance to the developing countries, should take the following as priorities: 1) to meet the basis needs of the poor population in the developing countries or regions and help them get rich on this basis; 2) to transfer information technology so as to help the developing countries or regions to transform their traditional economy into knowledge economy; 3) to transfer clean technology and help the developing countries or regions realize cycle economy.
I wish the Zhuhai Declaration could help promote the harmonization between the mankind and the nature, and realize the sustainable development of the human society and world economy.
(China.org.cn November 6, 2003)
