Abstract

40 years of reform and opening up, not only witnesses the 40 years of continuous improvement of environmental protection in Shanghai, but also represents the process of continuous optimization of the relationship between urban environment and economic development. At the new historic starting point, Shanghai is striving to become an outstanding global city, a city of innovation, humanity and ecology that people have always been yearning for. Shanghai's new historical position presents higher requirements for urban environmental protection; therefore, it requires us to review systematically the development course of Shanghai's environmental protection since the reform and opening up, and sum up the pattern and characteristics of the evolution of the relationship between economic and social development and environmental protection in Shanghai, which is of great significance to study and determine the evolving direction of environment and development of Shanghai in the future, promote the construction of an eco-friendly city, and solve other major issues as well.

In the past 40 years of reform and opening up, Shanghai's environmental protection has been closely integrated with the process of urban economic and social development. From the perspective of the objectives and tasks of Shanghai's environmental protection in various periods, the development course of environmental protection in Shanghai in the 40 years of reform and opening up can be divided into four stages. The first stage refers to the period from 1978 to 1990, when Shanghai first imposed control on heavy pollution source, heavy pollution industries and heavy pollution areas, which laid the foundation for modern environmental protection efforts in Shanghai. The second stage refers to the period of total pollutant reduction from 1991 to 2010, during which Shanghai, with the three-year action plan for pollution reduction and environmental protection as the starting point, seized the main goal of reducing the total amount of pollutant emissions, greatly decreasing the intensity of emissions and strengthening the construction of urban environmental infrastructure. The third stage is the stage of environmental quality improvement from 2011 to 2017. In this period, based on the remediation of individual pollutants in the past, Shanghai began to attach more importance to the overall characteristics of air and water environmental governance, strengthen the construction of urban ecological space, and vigorously promote the construction of Chongming as a world-class ecological island. In the meanwhile, we continued to strengthen the establishment of an environmental protection system, enhance regional cooperation on environmental protection, and actively participate in the prevention and remediation mechanism against air and water pollution at the Yangtze River Delta region. The fourth stage marks the period marching toward green development since 2018. As proposed in the seventh round of the three-year environmental protection action plan, we paid more attention to promoting green transformation and development in all fields, and the environmental protection endeavor in Shanghai had entered a new stage of overall improvement in the quality of the ecological environment, the comprehensive promotion of green transformation, and the modernization of the ecological environment management system and management capacity.

The objectives and tasks of environmental protection in Shanghai vary with the city orientation and the level of economic development, since environmental protection and urban economic development are an interactive process. This report constructs the index evaluation system of the coordinated development of environment and economy in Shanghai, and evaluates the harmonious relationship between environmental protection and economic development in Shanghai since 1991 by means of the model of coordinated development degree. In 1996, the degree of coordination between environmental system and economic system in Shanghai was only 0.644, we had not given effective attention to environmental protection until then, and environmental protection and economic development were still in an imbalanced state. After 1996, the degree of coordination between environment and economy in Shanghai kept on rise, and reached the first peak during the 2010 World Expo, and since then, the relationship between environmental protection and economic development has achieved a good balance. On the whole, we have been seeing a high degree of consistency between the development and evolution of the environment and economy in Shanghai since the 11th Five-Year Plan. From the perspective of the coordination degree of coordinated development of environment and economy in Shanghai, the figure has increased from 0.059 in 1991 to 0.939 in 2017, reflecting that the two have basically taken on the trend of synchronous growth, and urban environment and economic system have been in a high level of coordinated development stage after nearly 40 years of reform and opening up. The results of quantitative evaluation show that we shall strengthen the urban environmental protection endeavor from two aspects: first, improve the level of environmental protection and economic development vertically, which is the basis of improving the urban environmental quality; second, horizontally, we shall attach equal importance to environmental protection and economic development, and give priority to ecology and green development.

Although the level of coordinated development of environment and economy in Shanghai is continuously elevating in a good momentum, however, compared with the international top level and the residents' needs for a better life, there are still some imbalances and insufficiencies in the field of environmental protection in Shanghai that urgently demand breakthroughs and solutions: the ecological function of the city that needs to be further enhanced, the quality of the urban environment that needs to be fully improved, the construction of the environmental protection infrastructure that needs to be strengthened, the environmental pressure in the conjunctive area of the town and country due to the transfer of population and industries to the suburbs, the lack of environmental infrastructure, etc. , and the imbalance of spatial distribution of supply and demand of ecological space that still exists. In the face of the imbalances and insufficiencies in the field of environmental protection, Shanghai needs to further enhance the level of ecological and environmental protection and optimize the relationship between the environment and economic development. First, strengthen the green concept, centering on transforming economic advantages into ecological advantages, so as to realize source control, green development, production activities from “pollution” to “pollution-free”, and shift from coordination of economic development and ecological environment to priority of ecological environment. Second, expand the main entities of environmental protection. On the basis of continuing to play the leading role of the government, strengthen the building of scientific research institutions and professional ranks of environmental protection, focus on exerting the function of the professional knowledge and intellectual support of environmental protection experts and technical teams, and enhance public participation in environmental protection. Third, find more ways of environmental protection, improve the level of intelligent development of environmental protection, change the way of interaction between the environmental management department and ecological environment, between management departments, enterprises and the public, so as to improve the efficiency of interaction. Fourth, increase the objects for environmental protection, shift the focus of environmental protection to the prevention and control of both primary and secondary pollutants, and integrate the control of atmospheric pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Fifth, expand the scope of environmental protection. Taking advantage of the golden opportunity of the integrated development of Yangtze River Delta that has been elevated to be a national strategy, push forward the further upgrading of regional environmental protection linkage, advance cooperative legislation on regional environmental protection, promote cooperation in regional environmental protection industry, and coordinate promotion of the green transformation in chemical, steel and other key industries in the Yangtze River Delta.

Keywords: Reform and Opening Up; Environmental Protection; Coordinated Development; Evolution