Development of a Parsimonious Set of City-level Environmental Performance Metrics for Jiyuan, Henan, China

Lead PI: Dr. Dong Guo , Satyajit Bose

Unit Affiliation: Research Program on Sustainability Policy and Management (SPM)

January 2014 - June 2014
Inactive
Asia ; China ; Henan ; Jiyuan
Project Type: Research

DESCRIPTION: The potential tradeoff between the twin goals of reducing environmental impact while maintaining growth will require China’s cities to evaluate the economic impact of urban pollution at the local level. Using economic input-output analysis, city-level indicators of economic activity and environmental impact, and available estimates of the benchmark relationships between output and pollution by sector, we outline a method to quantify–in monetary terms–the marginal damages of air pollution by sector at the city level. By applying the framework of environmental accounting to the pilot case of Jiyuan, a small city in Henan province, we demonstrate a method for local public agencies to facilitate administrative tracking of monetized air pollution based on underlying economic activity, and outline a minimum set of metrics which a small city in China must track in order to estimate the monetized damage of air pollution by sector.