Abstract
Facing the increasing gap in economic development between the North and South in China, the urgent problem is whether social and environmental development disparity will increase and thus give rise to unsustainable development in the underdeveloped north. To answer this question, this study dealt with the concept of sustainable development, considering its three dimensions: economy, society and environment and focused on the Yellow River Economic Belt (YREB) in North China and the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YZREB) in South China. The spatial–temporal differences in sustainable development between the two economic belts from 2003 to 2016 were analyzed by using the entropy weight TOPSIS method and spatial autocorrelation. We found that economic recession did not lead to the degradation of sustainable development in the North, where high social progress level made up for the lack of economic development. The economic development level of YZREB was always higher than that of YREB, and the gap between the two increased exponentially. Although the social progress level in YREB was higher than that in YZREB, the gap between the two increased first and then decreased. The ecological civilization level of the two economic belts was relatively low and contributed little to sustainable development.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The data used in this paper were mainly derived from Statistical Yearbook of China, which can be downloaded on https://data.cnki.net/.
Code availability
Geoda and Arcmap software were used in this paper to analyze spatiotemporal data and visualize the result.
References
Cetin, M. (2016). Sustainability of urban coastal area management: A case study on Cide. Journal of Sustainable Forestry, 35(7), 527–541. https://doi.org/10.1080/10549811.2016.1228072
Cetin, M., Agacsapan, B., Cabuk, S. N., Senyel Kurkcuoglu, M. A., Isik Pekkan, O., Baran Argun, E., & Cabuk, A. (2021). Assessment of the ecological footprint of Eskisehir technical University-Iki Eylul campus. Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-021-01395-6
Chen, Y., Zhang, S., Huang, D., Li, B.-L., Liu, J., Liu, W., & Wang, H. (2017). The development of China’s Yangtze River Economic Belt: How to make it in a green way? Science Bulletin, 62(9), 648–651. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scib.2017.04.009
Cornescu, V., & Adam, R. (2014). Considerations regarding the role of indicators used in the analysis and assessment of sustainable development in the EU. Procedia Economics and Finance, 8, 10–16.
Di Tommaso, M. R., & Rubini, L. (2013). Southern China: Industry, development and industrial policy. Routledge.
Dinda, S. (2004). Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis: A survey. Ecological Economics, 49(4), 431–455. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2004.02.011
Giddings, B., Hopwood, B., & O’Brien, G. (2002). Environment, economy and society: Fitting them together into sustainable development. Sustainable Development, 10(4), 187–196. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.199
Guan, W., & Xu, S. (2015). Spatial energy efficiency patterns and the coupling relationship with industrial structure: A study on Liaoning Province. China. Journal of Geographical Sciences, 25(3), 355–368.
Ha, W., Yi, J., & Zhang, J. (2016). Brain drain, brain gain, and economic growth in China. China Economic Review, 38, 322–337.
Hickel, J. (2020). The sustainable development index: Measuring the ecological efficiency of human development in the anthropocene. Ecological Economics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.05.011
Hwang, C. L., & Yoon, K. (1981). Multiple attribute decision making: Methods and applications. Springer.
IUCN & WWF. (1980). World conservation strategy: Living resource conservation for sustainable development. Gland, Switzerland.
Kaya, E., Agca, M., Adiguzel, F., & Cetin, M. (2019). Spatial data analysis with R programming for environment. Human and Ecological Risk Assessment, 25(6), 1521–1530. https://doi.org/10.1080/10807039.2018.1470896
Kwatra, S., Kumar, A., & Sharma, P. (2020). A critical review of studies related to construction and computation of Sustainable Development Indices. Ecological Indicators. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2019.106061
Li, H., Lo, K., & Wang, M. (2015). Economic transformation of mining cities in transition economies: Lessons from Daqing. Northeast China. International Development Planning Review, 37(3), 311–328.
Li, M., Tian, Q., Yu, Y., Xu, Y., & Li, C. (2021). Virtual water trade in the Yellow River Economic Belt: A multi-regional input-output model. Water. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13060748
Liang, L., Wang, Z. B., Luo, D., Wei, Y., & Sun, J. (2020). Synergy effects and it’s influencing factors of China’s high technological innovation and regional economy. PLoS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231335
Liu, K., Qiao, Y., Shi, T., & Zhou, Q. (2021). Study on coupling coordination and spatiotemporal heterogeneity between economic development and ecological environment of cities along the Yellow River Basin. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 28(6), 6898–6912. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11051-0
Lu, S., Guan, X., Yu, D., Deng, Y., & Zhou, L. (2015). Multi-scale analysis of regional inequality based on spatial field model: A case study of China from 2000 to 2012. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 4(4), 1982–2003. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi4041982
Michael, F. L., Noor, Z. Z., & Figueroa, M. J. (2014). Review of urban sustainability indicators assessment - Case study between Asian countries. Habitat International, 44, 491–500.
Mohammed, A. J., & Ghebreyesus, T. A. (2018). Healthy living, well-being and the sustainable development goals. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 96(9), 590. https://doi.org/10.2471/blt.18.222042
Pedroni, P., & Yao, J. Y. (2006). Regional income divergence in China. Journal of Asian Economics, 17(2), 294–315.
Purvis, B., Mao, Y., & Robinson, D. (2019). Three pillars of sustainability: In search of conceptual origins. Sustainability Science, 14(3), 681–695. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-018-0627-5
Rodrigues, M., & Franco, M. (2020). Measuring the urban sustainable development in cities through a Composite Index: The case of Portugal. Sustainable Development, 28(4), 507–520.
Schneider, F., Kallis, G., & Martinez-Alier, J. (2010). Crisis or opportunity? Economic degrowth for social equity and ecological sustainability. Introduction to this special issue. Journal of Cleaner Production, 18(6), 511–518. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2010.01.014
Skevington, S. M., & Epton, T. (2018). How will the sustainable development goals deliver changes in well-being? A systematic review and meta-analysis to investigate whether WHOQOL-BREF scores respond to change. BMJ Global Health. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2017-000609
Song, Y., & Mei, D. (2021). Sustainable development of China’s regions from the perspective of ecological welfare performance: Analysis based on GM(1,1) and the malmquist index. Environment Development and Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-021-01485-y
Strezov, V., Evans, A., & Evans, T. J. (2017). Assessment of the economic, social and environmental dimensions of the indicators for sustainable development. Sustainable Development, 25(3), 242–253.
Sun, C., Chen, L., & Tian, Y. (2018). Study on the urban state carrying capacity for unbalanced sustainable development regions: Evidence from the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Ecological Indicators, 89, 150–158. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.02.011
Tian, Q., Zhao, T., & Yuan, R. (2021). An overview of the inequality in China’s carbon intensity 1997–2016: A Theil index decomposition analysis. Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy, 23(5), 1581–1601. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-021-02050-x
Tobler, W. R. (1970). A computer movie simulating urban growth in the Detroit region. Economic Geography, 46(sup1), 234–240.
Verma, P., & Raghubanshi, A. S. (2018). Urban sustainability indicators: Challenges and opportunities. Ecological Indicators, 93, 282–291. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.05.007
Wang, C., Wan, G., & Yang, D. (2014). income inequality in the people’s Republic of China: Trends, determinants, and proposed remedies. Journal of Economic Surveys, 28(4), 686–708.
Wang, Q., & Wang, S. (2019). A comparison of decomposition the decoupling carbon emissions from economic growth in transport sector of selected provinces in eastern, central and western China. Journal of Cleaner Production, 229, 570–581. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.04.375
WCED. (1987). Our common future: World commission on environment and development. Oxford University Press.
Xia, Y., & Zhong, M. C. (2016). Relationship between EKC hypothesis and the decoupling of environmental pollution from economic development: Based on China prefecture-level cities’ decoupling partition. China Population, Resources and Environment, 26(10), 8–16.
Xu, X., Yang, G., Tan, Y., Liu, J., & Hu, H. (2018). Ecosystem services trade-offs and determinants in China’s Yangtze River Economic Belt from 2000 to 2015. Science of the Total Environment, 634, 1601–1614. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.04.046
Xu, Z. W. (2016). Industrial economic development, environmental regulation intensity and emissions reduction effect: Theoretical analysis and empirical test based on development pattern of treatment after pollution. Journal of Finance and Economics, 42(3), 134–144.
Yang, Q., Li, L., Wang, Y., Wang, X., & Lu, Y. (2016). Spatial distribution pattern of population and characteristics of its evolution in China during 1935–2010. Geographical Research, 35(8), 1547–1560.
Yang, Q., Wan, X., & Ma, H. (2015). assessing green development efficiency of municipalities and provinces in china integrating models of super-efficiency DEA and Malmquist index. Sustainability, 7(4), 4492–4510. https://doi.org/10.3390/su7044492
Zhao, J., Ji, G., Yue, Y., Lai, Z., Chen, Y., Yang, D., & Wang, Z. (2019). Spatio-temporal dynamics of urban residential CO2 emissions and their driving forces in China using the integrated two nighttime light datasets. Applied Energy, 235, 612–624. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.09.180
Zhou, B., Liu, W., Lu, W., Zhao, M., & Li, L. (2020). Application of OECD LSE framework to assess spatial differences in rural green development in the arid Shaanxi Province, China. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17010286
Zou, H., & Ma, X. (2021). Identifying resource and environmental carrying capacity in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China: The perspectives of spatial differences and sustainable development. Environment Development and Sustainability, 23(10), 14775–14798. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-021-01271-w
Funding
We express appreciation to the students at the College of Environment and Planning of Henan University for data collecting and processing, including Xia Wang, Xiangning Wang, Jiaxuan Ye and Mingzhao Shi. This research was also supported by grants from the National Science Foundation of China (No. 41671536, 41501588) and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2016M600575).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Yongyue Ji and Lijun Zhang. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Yongyue Ji and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests.
Ethical approval
Ethics approval was not required for this research.
Consent for publication
The work described has not been published elsewhere; all the authors have approved the manuscript.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ji, Y., Zhang, L. Comparative analysis of spatial–temporal differences in sustainable development between the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the Yellow River Economic Belt. Environ Dev Sustain 25, 979–994 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-021-02087-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-021-02087-4