Abstract
At a time when the gap between rich and poor is growing, and widespread economic instabilities are severe, people are placing great hopes on the effort to develop a global green economy. Yet 60 percent of the ecosystem goods that support human life and well-being have already been degraded or are currently being used in an unsustainable manner. By comparing problems and achievements relative to green development in two of the world’s most influential nations—the United States and China—this paper addresses the following related questions: “Where does the problem lie?” and “What should we do?” To help further promote dialog, we report on current conditions in China, as well as recent initiatives in the United States, and propose systemic and integrative approaches for developing green economies worldwide.
Introduction
In the late-twentieth century, far-sighted people in academia, industry, and politics began to warn of the inevitable damaging consequences if this mode of human development were to remain dominant. Thanks to their tireless efforts, the goal of achieving sustainable development has become far more common since the 1980s. Nevertheless, over the past thirty years, regional and local crises involving resources, biodiversity, environment, population, agriculture, food, and so on have become critical, and climate change poses serious threats to the survival of humankind worldwide. As the gap between rich and poor grows, regional and transnational conflicts are increasingly frequent, and economic imbalances and instabilities are severe. People are placing their hopes on the most fundamental component of sustainable development—developing a global green economy.
Especially after the recent financial crisis, green development combined with economic recovery has become the focus of numerous academic books, papers, and high-level international conferences. However, the current outlook is not optimistic. While the world economy had quadrupled in the past twenty-five years, 60 percent of ecosystem goods and services that support human livelihoods have been degraded or are being used in an unsustainable manner (United Nations Environmental Program [UNEP] 2011). The traditional “brown” economy still dominates development in most countries throughout the world.
By comparing problems and achievements relative to green development in the United States and China, this paper addresses the related questions, “Where does the problem lie?” and “What should we do?” To help further promote dialog, we report on current conditions in China, as well as recent initiatives in the United States, and propose systemic and integrative approaches for developing green economies globally.
Part 1: Green Development in China
Inevitable Choices and New Opportunities
After thirty years of rapid economic development following China’s reform and opening up, its economy is now second in the world. However, China today faces many different challenges:
Scarcity of resources and limits to ecological carrying capacity seriously impact sustainable economic development.
Social reform lags behind economic reform. Such issues as social justice, social security, employment, eradication of corruption, income distribution, the gap between rich and poor, and so on are all affecting social stability.
Problems concerning urbanization, agriculture, countryside, and farmer well-being, and the gap between eastern and western regions, as well as other contradictions brought about by traditional industrialization urgently need to be resolved.
Faced with these challenges, China’s only viable option is to fundamentally change its mode of economic development. The nation’s burgeoning new technological and industrial revolution, which takes “sustainable & green” as dominant characteristics, not only opens endless innovation space for sustainable development (UNEP 2011) but also provides a new impetus for China’s continued economic growth in the postfinancial crisis era.
China had adopted a variety of measures to achieve green development, including structure adjustment, reform of relevant institutions, improvement of the policy system, increased investment in the R&D of green technology, reinforcing measures to benefit people’s livelihood, and more. New sources of energy, energy-saving and environmental protection, and production of electric vehicles, which all relate directly to a green economy, are now the top three among the seven emerging strategic industries in China’s 12th Five-Year Plan. According to UNEP’s statistical standards, the current output value of China’s green industry accounts for about 10 percent of total national GDP (Fei 2011). Take renewable energy and low-carbon fuel use in cities for example:
In 2010, China’s investment in renewable energy reached 380 billion Yuan, ranking it the first in the world.
For the past four years, the average annual growth rate of China’s installed wind power capacity has exceeded 100 percent, and the cumulative installed wind power capacity reached 62,360 MW in 2011, surpassing the United States for the first time.
Solar photovoltaic power production was 3,000 MW in 2011, and China’s energy yield from solar battery use reached 8 GW in 2010, accounting for 50 percent of total world production and ranking first in the world. The total capacity of China’s solar photovoltaic power plants will be 2 GW by 2020, and solar thermal power generation will also reach 2 GW by this date.
Developments within China’s energy-saving and environmental protection industry have also been very rapid. At the end of 2010, the output of China’s energy-saving and environmental protection industry was about two trillion RMB, in keeping with the nation’s average annual growth of 15 to 20 percent during the past five years.
China is piloting eight low-carbon projects in cities in five provinces. These provinces are Guangdong, Liaoning, Hubei, Shaanxi, and Yunnan, and the cities are Tianjin, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Xiamen, Hangzhou, Nanchang, Guiyang, and Baoding. In addition, China is launching emissions trading pilot programs in two provinces and five cities (the provinces of Guangdong and Hubei, and the cities of Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Shenzhen).
By 2015, 100 new energy cities, 1,000 demonstration pilots of new energy, 200 demonstration counties of green energy, and 10,000 villages of new energy will be built. This initiative will include the promotion and application of solar thermal energy sources.
Challenges Facing China’s Green Economic Development
China has taken solid steps to develop a green economy, and its future plans are exciting. However, actually achieving green development will involve overcoming some severe challenges. Take the wind power and solar photovoltaic cell (PV) industries as examples:
The wind power industry in China has grown rapidly, and its cumulative wind power installed capacity ranks first in the world. However, about one-third of that capacity is currently idle because the power it could generate cannot be fed into the electricity grid system. At present, most of the wind power plants already built in China are experiencing financial losses or low profits.
China’s solar PV industry accounts for 60 percent of global production capacity. More than 90 percent of the products of the top five companies ranked in the PV industry in China are for export. Photovoltaic projects have been launched one after another all around the country. But due to the debt crisis in Europe, the U.S. economic downturn, and increased trade barriers, both global PV demand and market prices have taken a sharp downturn. Now China has overcapacity in the industry. More than fifty companies have closed down, 30 percent of the remaining companies have dramatically cut their production, and the whole industry chain is in the doldrums. The backlog of unsold PV products has reached 10 GW, roughly equivalent to the total sales realized by China’s PV companies in 2010, namely, 10.7 GW (Xiangan 2011).
Furthermore, production of silicon materials and silicon ingot in the upstream of the PV industry chain is dependent on foreign imports since China lacks the needed core technologies. Although China has the capacity to manufacture aero-generators, its equipment R&D and manufacturing capability are weak and so, here too, it must rely on imports. The main patents covering aero-generators are still controlled by foreign enterprises and their subsidiaries in China. Assembling an aero-generator requires importing 20 percent of the core components. Yet, despite being dependent on imports of key equipment for production and testing in this industry, and upon export markets for sales, China remains a key node of processing and assembly for the world’s solar photovoltaic industry.
The construction of new energy production plants and equipment in China accounts for about 30 percent of total energy consumption throughout the whole society. This indicates that, in addition to the technical energy-saving, behavioral energy-saving (i.e., worker-retraining and lifestyle modification by energy users) is also a critically important part of China’s Green Energy plan.
There exists a severe shortage of technical and managerial talent. For example, while the energy-conservation industry employs at least 500,000 people across China, only some 70,000 of them are specialized and 40,000 of those are technicians.
The roots of China’s challenges to green economic development include,
Lack of a comprehensive strategy based on a long-term future perspective
As a densely populated and tradition-honoring country, the consequences of depleting China’s natural capital (the sum of its life-supporting ecosystem; Hawken et al. 2002) are more serious than they might be in most other countries of the world. China lacks not only a long-term comprehensive strategy but also planning for overall development and comprehensive coordination at national, industry, and regional levels. Therefore, it is difficult to guide green economic development for the whole country. Due to this lack of overall strategic planning, some local governments follow the trend blindly in the name of “green economy” and simply proceed to build wind power, photovoltaic solar, and other new energy facilities at any available location. This boosts over-investment in these industries and results in much redundant construction and waste of resources. Almost all development of solar energy, wind energy, biomass energy, and the emerging coal chemical industry have gone through or are going through this same process: The temptation of high profits leads to crazy investment, which results in excess capacity and, eventually, the bubble bursts.
Lack of any sustained management mechanism for implementing green development strategy
This includes a lack of tracking throughout the entire cycle of planning (deployment–supervision–feedback–assessment–adjustment) at national, industry, and regional levels. China’s industrial structure remains largely based on high energy-consuming industries, whose heavy reliance on coal severely restricts chances for green-tech and green industrial innovation to take hold. In addition, the short-term costs of implementing green development are still higher than those of the traditional development model, and changing the established business model (namely, short-term profit maximization) is still a great challenge. China has formulated ambitious sustainable development goals, but they are not linked to assessment of official performance at all levels, and an increase in GDP remains the standard measure of achievement. In addition, the policies of Western “Fortune 500” companies continue to be the preferred model for most Chinese enterprises, with only the “Future 500” (www.future500.org) group promoting the triple bottom-line concept. Yet, after nine years of working to offer an alternative business model for China, the Future 500 (www.future500china.org) concept continues to encounter many difficulties, and it is now clear that controlling the indicator of energy-saving emission reduction alone is not enough to alter traditional enterprise behaviors.
The legal system for promoting green development is imperfect
China’s many policies and institutions are not aligned, and a systematic incentive-restrictive mechanism dominated by green development is absent:
Several relevant laws have been enacted, such as “Energy Conservation Law,” “Cleaner Production Promotion Law,” “Renewable Energy Law,” “Circular Economy Promotion Law,” and more. However, a number of legislative provisions are not detailed enough to operate effectively, there is inadequate provision for coordinating laws, and in some instances, there are actual contradictions and conflicts among legal provisions.
Specific laws in the fields of oil, gas, nuclear, and other relevant energy sources are still lacking, resulting in poor coordination between efforts to develop energy and efforts to protect the environment;
The property rights system for ecological environment resources is not clear. Defining clear property rights is one of the preconditions for establishing a workable resource compensation mechanism.
China still lacks a viable resource-energy pricing mechanism. Under the market economy, allocation of resources is mainly influenced by price, but this does not always accurately reflect the relationship between market supply and demand, take account of the scarcity of specific resources, or assess the degree of environmental damage.
The lack of any comprehensive incentive-restrictive mechanism, even for those indicators of energy-saving and emission reduction used by the central government, produces poor results and lacks adequate rewards or penalties. Since there are no incentive mechanisms for improving enterprise resource recycling, utilization, conservation, effective technical support mechanism, or the like, energy consumption and the waste of resources are actually encouraged, while development and utilization of new energy sources and new materials are subject to various restrictions.
Capacity-building is not taken seriously
At present, developing the green economy in China is mainly driven by hard-technology projects. It lacks soft-technology innovation, including capacity-building programs and projects. Take technology transfer as an example. Due to the constraints imposed by state monopolies in certain key areas, both the technology market system and the technology price assessment system are weak, and the efficiency of technology transfer is generally low. To improve the technology transfer mechanism and establish technology market management norms will require more than isolated green technology projects. In addition, China should consider why its targets for energy-saving and emission reduction were not achieved during its recently competed “11th Five-Year Plan.”
Lack of independent core technology
China needs to focus on all types of green technologies and to enhance R&D for basic technologies, supporting technologies, and equipment technologies, when forming new multi-level technology systems.
Excessive reliance on large-scale enterprises
China needs to increase support for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with good technology prospects and strong R&D capabilities, and solve credit issues for them. Most financial institutions are afraid to take on the risks of providing loans for green economy projects in poor areas.
Failure to give full play to the strength of NGOs
While the potential for social organizations, including NGOs, to promote and assist sustainable development is growing, lack of any comprehensive understanding of social capital means that NGO activities are strictly limited in China, and the potential of their richly talented social capital is not being fully used.
The Role of State Intervention in Developing China’s Green Economy
In the long run, relying solely on the Government’s determination and enforcement powers cannot achieve sustainable green development. From a global perspective, China is still far from having a green economy, and the proper amount of state intervention is very important at this early stage, especially as an example to developing countries. Government should create institutional conditions conducive to green development, in both the hard environment (public and industrial infrastructure) and soft (laws, regulations, standards norms, networks, etc.). State intervention can be divided into several categories:
Strategic direction
National medium- and long-term strategies must make sustainability the goal, and promote the green economy by developing green industries, “greening” production processes, increasing green jobs, and enabling an environment- and nature-friendly society. China has incorporated green development into its national strategy, and the “Outline” of its 12th Five-Year Plan includes promoting green development and building a resource-saving, environment-friendly society. But governments at all levels should formulate practical medium- and long-term plans for green development according to their local situations, and link these up with other local initiatives, for example, economic and social development planning, energy planning, energy-saving and emission reduction planning, resource utilization and circular economy planning, environmental protection and ecosystem restoration planning, and science and technology planning. For strategic deployment, local authorities should proactively identify and design demonstration projects of green development and utilize these to carry out orderly development and avoid rushing into mass action.
Combining direct control and policy orientation to provide institutional guarantees for the green economy
Direct control includes laws, regulations, and administrative means. As mandatory means, on the one hand, they must lay down effective laws and regulations. These include “green” reform of the existing institutions that govern the basic economy, administration, taxation, and credit, as well as the mechanisms for pricing resources and products, levying environmental protection charges, and so on. At the same time, they should also develop and perfect supporting laws in such fields as energy, the environment, resources, public services, and so on.
Operational mechanisms are needed (1) to form an integrated decision-making mechanism that coordinates development of resources, environment, society, and the economy; (2) for production, distribution, and consumption by government, private enterprises, and the public, which should include incentives and restraints that will support the green economy; (3) to build a management system and operating mechanisms compatible with green development (Zhao 2003); (4) to establish a system and mechanisms for supporting scientific and technological innovation for green development; (5) to develop a green market mechanism, such as carbon emissions trading, and green credit systems; and (6) to establish a reliable system of statistics, tracking, and evaluation that will accurately measure the performance of officials relative to green development.
Policy orientation: Government is both a policymaker and a regulator. And the policies supporting green development can be divided into direct and supporting policies.
Economic policy, environmental policy, and resource policy are all direct policies. They include industrial policy, green job policy, carbon tax policy, as well as fiscal and credit policies that favor green development.
Green development involves all industry sectors and all levels of society. Thus, it is not enough to rely on direct policy alone; instead, this must be supplemented by a comprehensive system of indirect supporting economic, social, and public policies, as well as other macroeconomic policies and policies that govern specific economic sectors.
Major green projects reflecting the State’s long-term will and interests
The Central Government may invest in directly or promote these by bringing into full play the role of national funds. While China has an advantage in total quantity of resources, on a “per capita” basis, it is in a weak position. For example, the Chinese government has decided to invest four trillion RMB to solve water problems during the next ten years and to invest over five trillion RMB in environmental protection in the period of “12th Five-Year Plan” (www.chinadaily.com)—a significant increase over the previous planning cycle.
Guide and grasp the direction of technological innovation
China needs to strengthen its technology assessment and selection mechanisms, including its ability to identify technologies that deserve national priority support, so as to guide the direction of R&D investment, facilitate the use of foreign advanced technology and talent, and help focus the priorities that foreign investors pursue.
International relations
Improve the proportion of green products that are exported, construct and perfect China’s green trade legal system, and shift away from confrontation over green trade barriers. Encourage the sharing of green innovation as soon as possible through cooperative development, mergers, and acquisitions. Strive to make a place for the green economy in the international industry chain, particularly upstream (i.e., in mining and producing basic materials such as silicon, which are later used to construct green equipment).
Guide the whole society to create an atmosphere of green development
China needs to start from primary and secondary school levels onward to foster people’s awareness of green development, to promote green activities such as the design and use of low-carbon-footprint schools, agencies, businesses, hotels, homes, and entire communities. In addition, it should provide positive support for various types of NGOs by encouraging them to promote green development, while guiding urban and rural residents to change their traditional concepts of consumption, making green lifestyles and consumption patterns the new norm for social morality.
Part 2: Green Development in the United States
The green development situation in the United States is very different from that in the People’s Republic of China. The United States has no overall green policy or strategy mechanism, and none is being considered at this time, because there is still no public or political consensus that the problem is serious enough to warrant transformative changes.
In 2013, the United States is confronted with advances in drilling technology that significantly expand the oil and gas reserves of North America and provide the opportunity to reduce its need for imports in the decades ahead—achieving greater temporary energy independence. Following this path for the near term takes the pressure off the need for developing clean energy technologies and delays achieving a green economy and serious mitigation of climate change. Nevertheless, some political leaders, including President Obama, have begun to call for both a longer-term strategy that does include mitigation of climate change and a path to sustainable energy independence with clean energy technologies (see President Obama State of the Union 2013 at http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/02/13/president-obamas-2013-state-union, see Wyden and Murkowski energy policy announcement at www.energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2013/2/livestream-of-wyden-murkowski-at-center-of-strategic-international-studies, and see Bill Richardson opinion in the Financial Times of February 21, 2013, at http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/cc529a22-7b51-11e2-8eb3-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2LYcjCnpo).
Despite the absence of any long-term and integrated environment, energy, and climate change policy, many initiatives, projects, and research activities important for green development are underway in the United States. Let us offer a few illustrations.
Understanding Climate Change: Its Causes and Consequences
The U.S. government agencies support data collection, modeling, and analysis for understanding earth climate systems. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been collecting data about the earth with space missions for nearly thirty years. This helped the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to conclude in 2007 that “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” NASA is now operating many space missions each year to provide scientists with data to help them assess what the consequences will be. How much warmer will it get? How much will sea levels rise? What will happen to soil moisture, and therefore agricultural production, in a warmer world? What changes will occur in sea ice and land ice? (see climate.nasa.gov/NasaRole).
The U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is also striving to develop and implement climate science, tools, products, and information that can better prepare the country for the impacts of climate variability and change, and help mitigate human influence on climate. NOAA is working to gain authority to establish a National Climate Service, to better integrate these functions and support sound, scientifically backed policies and programs to respond to climate change. NOAA already provides basic information for the public on climate change via its website, noaa.gov/climate.
Many U.S. universities and national laboratory-based research institutions support global work on climate change. For example, the Joint Global Change Research Institute (JGCRI) of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, working with the University of Maryland, supports an interdisciplinary team dedicated to understanding the problems of global climate change and their potential solutions. One of the strengths of the Joint Institute is a network of domestic and international collaborators that encourages the development of global and equitable solutions to climate change problems. The Joint Institute has collaborative programs with Chinese institutions (see globalchange.umd.edu).
Another example is the new National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), sponsored by the National Science Foundation and based at the University of Maryland, whose programs will support the synthesis of natural and social science data in addressing problems of the environment. Fostering fundamental, discovery-driven synthesis research that contributes to actionable science is central to the center’s mission. SESYNC is bringing together multidisciplinary teams to focus on particular problems and provide access to all the data resources, and computer and modeling power of other agencies and research institutions (see sesync.org).
President Obama has initiated a climate change adaptation program for the Federal government’s internal operations using existing authorities and resources. On October 5, 2009, President Obama signed an Executive Order directing a Task Force to develop a report with recommendations for how the Federal Government can strengthen policies and programs to better prepare the nation to adapt to the impacts of climate change. On October 28, 2011, this Task Force released a report outlining the Federal Government’s progress in expanding and strengthening the Nation’s capacity to better understand, prepare for, and respond to extreme weather events and other climate change impacts. The report provides an update on actions in key areas of Federal adaptation, including building resilience in local communities, safeguarding critical natural resources such as fresh water, and providing accessible climate information and tools to help decision-makers manage climate risks (see whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ceq/initiatives/adaptation).
Because of the potentially catastrophic impacts of climate change, several macro-strategies for altering climate have been proposed. However, these strategies themselves could involve great risks to humans and the World. The United Kingdom’s Royal Society has conducted a study of these proposals, and more recently the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) conducted its own technology assessment of these proposals. The GAO examined the peer-reviewed scientific literature and government reports, consulted experts with a wide variety of backgrounds and viewpoints, surveyed 1,006 adults across the United States, and convened experts with the assistance of the National Academy of Sciences to advise it on the findings. The GAO concluded that these proposed technologies were currently immature and that many could have potentially negative consequences (see gao.gov and report GAO-11-71. 2011).
Regional Environmental Management
The U.S. began its environmental remediation and protection initiatives over thirty years ago and has made progress in many areas at both local and regional levels. It is continuing where it can under existing laws. Federal government laws and regulations have set standards and provided guidance to states and industries on air quality, water quality, safety of chemicals, clean up of contaminated sites, and how to avoid future contamination. Implementation is managed by states. In many cases, states have the option to adopt stricter standards and set faster implementation goals.
The early progress has come from addressing problems that are easy to see and correct. These have included (1) setting automobile and power plant emission standards that were achievable with existing technologies and (2) state and local government enforcement of standards within their jurisdictions through permits and inspections, and changing land use rules where needed.
The United States is now addressing the much more complex systemic challenges of improving the air and water quality of entire regions. These are the same issues that now face China and other countries, and are the reason we need integrated management that is capable of handling the scope, scale, and complexity of these challenges.
The following three cases from the State of Maryland’s experience may help illustrate the approaches being taken in the United States today.
Putting the Chesapeake Bay Watershed on a pollution diet
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States and one of the largest and most biologically productive estuaries in the world. The Chesapeake Bay’s Watershed covers a 64,000 square mile area that includes all or parts of Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, New York, and the District of Columbia. Despite significant efforts over several decades by Federal, state, and local governments along with many NGOs and private groups, pollution in the Chesapeake Bay still exceeds existing water quality standards. The pollutants are largely nutrients—nitrogen, phosphorous, and sediment. To make further progress requires putting the watershed on a diet for each pollutant by adopting a coordinated regional approach with watershed goals and allocations for each of the many jurisdictions involved. The diet is known as the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency coordinated a three-year multi-jurisdictional process of working groups that prepared implementation approaches for each state and established allocations for each jurisdiction. They are now developing detailed implementation plans for the next five years with specific goals and allocations.
In the State of Maryland, the Governor stated that one of his fifteen goals was restoring the health of the Chesapeake Bay by 2025. He established the BayStat program to monitor progress on each plan component and report to the public. Within Maryland, the state allocations have been sub-allocated to fifty-eight segments of the watershed in the state (see epa.gov/chesapeakebaytmdl, mde.state.md.us/programs/Water/TMDL/ChesapeakeBayTMDL, baystat.maryland.gov).
Similar approaches are now being undertaken for the Great Lakes and other watershed regions.
Reducing greenhouse emissions and adapting to climate change regionally
The State of Maryland, in collaboration with other Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states, has also created a large portfolio of initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change. The Maryland Governor has set the goal of reducing Maryland greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020. Needless to say, Maryland cannot accomplish this goal without action by the other states in its region, so integrated actions are critical to the success of any state in the region (see statestat.maryland.gov).
One of the actions taken was to create the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI): a nonprofit cooperative effort by nine states that committed to cap and reduce power sector carbon dioxide emissions 10 percent by 2018. RGGI is the first mandatory, market-based carbon dioxide emissions reduction program in the United States.
RGGI activities include setting allowances for jurisdictions, tracking and reporting emissions, implementing an auction system for allowances, and providing technical assistance. The RGGI board of directors are the chief environmental and chief regulatory officers in each of the nine states. RGGI has no regulatory or enforcement authority; all such sovereign authority is reserved within the states. Each state issues allowances to power plants in its state. RGGI operates regional allowance auctions. Funds received by RGGI from these auctions are reallocated to the states for energy programs. Power plants can use their allowances issued by any state to demonstrate compliance with an individual state program. In this manner, the state programs, in aggregate, function as a single regional compliance market for carbon dioxide emissions. Of course, more than 90 percent of emissions come from the large, old coal burning plants, so they will be most heavily impacted by the caps and are expected to seek to buy allowances to the extent they can (see rggi.org; mde.state.md.us/programs/Air).
Maryland, like other states, has created a wide range of initiative to help meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals. Maryland has adopted the California standards for vehicle emissions (the highest in the United States) and established rigorous compliance operations. It has created EmPOWER Maryland residential, industrial, and commercial initiatives to assist with energy efficiency upgrades. It has established renewable energy goals and a portfolio of programs, including requiring that electricity suppliers generate 20 percent of their total electricity from renewable sources—solar, wind, biomass, landfill gas, and hydroelectric—by 2022. It has launched a Coast Smart Communities Initiative to assist Maryland coastal communities in adapting to sea level rise and other hazards (see statestat.maryland.gov/GDUgreenhouse).
Maryland Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) initiative
For several decades, policy people and researchers concerned about green development have been dissatisfied with traditional indicators like the gross domestic or state product, which address only economic transactions. These traditional indicators do not measure environmental and social costs, impacts of human activity and behavior, or the value of the contribution of natural systems and resources. Researchers have developed a measure they call the GPI that incorporates twenty-six different indicators to provide a more comprehensive assessment of progress for a nation or region.
In the United States, a number of one-time projects and research institution–based studies have demonstrated the value of the GPI. As described in the next section, Chinese researchers have done the same.
The State of Maryland is the first state in the United States to have implemented the GPI as a state operational function. In addition, it publishes the Maryland GPI on the State’s website. Go to http://www.green.maryland.gov/mdgpi/. Maryland has gone further to develop and provide a model for analysts and citizens to use to examine the impact of several changes in green policies and practices on the state GPI for the next fifty years. The website provides a tutorial on the GPI and its uses in Maryland.
This Maryland experience is demonstrating that a GPI can be implemented by a state to provide the government and the public with useful information. Now we need more governments around the world to capture and publish similar information so we all learn how to develop and use it better.
These three cases illustrate the importance of addressing complex green development problems with goals-based, rigorously monitored, publicly reported, and regionally coordinated long-term programs with integrated management systems. These two initiatives are new, and we do not yet know whether they will achieve their goals, but they are a start toward the comprehensive, integrated management approach we propose in more detail in the next section of this article.
Part 3: Framing a Systemic and Integrated Solution for Developing the Green Economy
According to the UNEP’s definition, a green economy is one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcity. At the same time, it is low-carbon, resource efficient and socially inclusive (UNEP 2011). Recently, the concept of the green economy has further evolved into green growth or green development, which means economic progress should contribute to sustained, low-carbon and socially inclusive development. The following three points from the UNEP definition are worth noting: (1) growth in this definition is different from growth of output in the traditional economic sense, but still results in economic progress; (2) “green” means that we must make efficient use of natural resources and respect the carrying capacity of ecosystems as a precondition to ensuring environmental sustainability; and (3) low-carbon footprint and social inclusion are the twin goals of green growth (United Nations Geneva 2011).
Chinese scientist Qian Xuesen has put forward the concept of complex giant systems. So, if the world’s geographical and ecological system, social system, individual organisms, and the human body and brain are each regarded as examples of complex giant systems, then implementing green development will require an open complex giant system capable of integrating several categories of subsystems, including natural resources, system, Earth’s eco-environment system, life system, social system, economic system, etc. Moreover, while all these systems are interdependent, each remains unique (with its own special character and function). The openness of these systems also means that developing a green economy cannot be completed by any single nation acting alone. Instead, it will require extensive cooperation among countries, in multiple fields and at all levels, including the political level.
Thus, achieving green development requires designing systemic solutions in which economy, society, ecology, and resources can be kept in balance and integrated, using entire regions and even the international community as a whole, within a platform designed to run cross-cutting complex giant systems. For example, the strategic integration of economic, social, ecological, and resources systems will necessarily involve management integration of national macro-strategies, as well as management of industries, enterprises, and civic behaviors.
Green development needs to run at least two large systems in the implementation phase, one to implement green development itself and another for the strategic management of the green development process.
Implementing Green Development—From Concept to Action
The first of these systems is illustrated in Figure 1 below. It consists of two levels.
Understanding the complex system of green development.
The lower level represents the concept and background of green development, and the multiple system changes required to implement the transformation of cultural values, lifestyle and consumption patterns, modes of production, work, urban planning, business models, national governance systems, and others, all of which impact green development. The upper level shows the operational aspects of green development, including five systems: strategic planning, soft implementation tools, hard implementation tools, and conditions for implementation.
Green development within the context of the environment
Only with a comprehensive understanding of the environment as a whole can green development efforts correctly set strategic objectives, and implementation approaches, using tools and methods appropriate to actual conditions.
Implementing the green economy constitutes a true economic revolution, one which will have more far-reaching influence than any technological revolution, and will enable mankind to enter a new stage of civilization. To realize green development, humans will need to radically change their values, norms of behavior, and lifestyles. It is not enough to rely solely on halfway measures such as green investment, institutions promoting green development, and preferential policies for green R&D.
Changing concepts and values
For human beings to truly change the dominant model for development from that of “high energy use, high consumption of raw materials, and high emissions” to one of “low consumption, low emissions, high efficiency and sustainability,” we need to change ways of thought and values that have prevailed for centuries. In addition, we must alter the concept of business that sets maximizing profit ahead of all other economic and social goals. Such changes will require enormous effort, all the more so since the “successes” realized by developed countries to date have not been due to efforts at green development.
Most developing countries in the world are still at the primary or intermediate stage of industrialization. From their point of view, hard economic power, hard infrastructure, and the accumulation of financial capital all remain important parts of building up their national strength. Thus, they erroneously cling to GDP as the only reliable indicator of progress.
In fact, green development is based on ecological civilization in which the majority of people in the society recognize that natural resources and the environment are not only the support system of human life but also the material basis of economic and social progress, and that their carrying capacity has limits. People instinctively understand that they cannot endlessly take and contribute nothing in return, and that they must also consider the needs of future generations, respect of the rights of other living creatures, and seek to live in harmony with nature, rather than blindly pursue the so-called “people-oriented” path. We need to build upon this instinctive understanding to completely change the dominant “people first” worldview and create global values that focus on the adoption of sustainable political, economic, and cultural values.
Profound changes in lifestyles and consumption patterns
Following hundreds of years of technological progress and the success of several waves of industrial revolutions, the material life of most people in the world has greatly improved, and some are clearly affluent. But in the process, we have gradually adopted social tendencies that foster high consumption and high waste. The result is that the environment for human survival has been severely damaged and that natural disasters increasingly occur. More and more people are packed into crowded cities, living in concrete skyscrapers, driving instead of walking, becoming obese, and suffering from new diseases. Some believe that as affluence increases in any country, the more unhappy people there seem to be and the higher the national suicide rates. In China, some people crazily vie with each other in material consumption. This “consumption” psychology results in excessive acquisition of luxury goods and an overall level of spending that is incompatible with China’s basic conditions. Is such a lifestyle healthy? Is it worth continuing?
Green consumerism focuses on moderation, and the balance between meeting human needs and maintaining the environment’s capacity to supply raw materials and recover. As such, it is designed to ease the tensions between humans and resources, energy, and environment. Accordingly, it offers the choice of uncontaminated and healthy green products, while avoiding or reducing waste, and encouraging citizens to choose low-energy modes of travel.
To establish new social trends and promote a cultural atmosphere of green lifestyles and sustainable consumerism, people need to be persuaded to satisfy their needs for clothing, food, daily necessities, construction, housing, transportation, and travel, while resisting the lure of old vices and luxury consumption. A critical question is how such attitude “re-education” could be successfully achieved in both China and the United States. As countries with unique histories and traditions, it is likely they would use very different methods to achieve similar goals. Poster and mass media campaigns from the central government appealing to patriotism and national success might be most successful in China, while the United States is more likely to choose tax incentives, new legislation, or popular referenda at the state level. But on the global level, the pursuit of similar goals is likely to provide mutual support worldwide.
Changing production methods
We should also rethink how to approach fashioning products for human use out of raw materials. Rather than view production as a conquest of nature, in which the waste of resources is acceptable if it boosts short-term profits, producers should build a respect for nature, by recognizing natural limits, and thus use and reuse resources efficiently. Accomplishing this will require developing new green hard technologies to help the production process reduce polluting emissions, do less damage to the natural environment, improve efficiency in resource utilization, and vigorously develop the ideal of a circular economy using such concepts as industrial ecology. Also needed will be healthy “soft” technologies developed to nondestructively make use of renewable and recycled resources to manufacture goods, produce food, and add consumer value without polluting the environment or aggravating problems in society. The result will be nothing less than a redefinition of basic economic values using concepts such as industrial ecology and dematerialization.
Reforming the socioeconomic system and mechanism
From the macro level, green development is based on a harmonious human society and world peace. These are also the ultimate goals of sustainable development: namely, to actualize prosperity and peace generation after generation, building a harmonious society that embraces human civilization, spiritual and ecological values (Jin 2010b, 341). The costs incurred by war, violence, and social conflict not only cause great needless human suffering and loss of life, but also waste huge quantities of global resources and cause widespread ecological destruction. None of these can be wholly compensated for by developing a green economy or by merely changing lifestyles, consumption patterns, and production modes. Accordingly, each country must institute reforms and improvements within their national and regional social systems and institutions. Examples might include expansion of employment, more equitable distribution of income, and improving social security, health care, and housing systems to continuously upgrade the well-being of their people, and thus create a harmonious society with the ability to properly resolve such issues as the negative impacts brought on by globalization and by minimizing the threat of harm from domestic or foreign hostile forces. This is a basic premise for green development; a fair world order is the fundamental guarantee that green development promises.
Green business model
Enterprises adapting green development can no longer take economic profit maximization as their sole business objective (see the section “Changing the Development Mode and Corporate Behaviors” below).
Changing the development mode
With green development, economic profit maximization cannot be the sole business objective. The various crises in today’s society, especially the crisis in resources and the ecology, have largely been caused by human pursuit of material wealth and unconstrained industrialization. Therefore, we must change lifestyles, production modes, and patterns of consumption by rewarding those careers and ways of life that do not cause damage to society and ecosystems. But to do this, we must turn ideas into actions, reflected in all aspects of the implementation of green development.
Implementing green development
As stated earlier, the implementation of green development will depend on five essential and interdependent management systems that address strategic planning, tangible and intangible means and approaches, conditions of support and guarantee, and tracking the management and supervision of implementation (see Figure 1 above). Past efforts to promote a green economy have tended to invest financial and human resources primarily in hard-technology projects and hard infrastructure construction, but have paid little attention to strategic management, while largely ignoring soft industrial innovation and capacity-building. Even in China, corporate behavior and evaluation criteria of official performance have not kept pace with the government’s stated goal of building a green economy, resulting in poor efficiency of technology transfer and use. We must maintain a balance between hard and soft in setting strategic goals, deploying resources, selecting implementation methods and tools, and maintaining support systems.
Strategy, planning, and a roadmap
Realization of green development requires a transition from industrial civilization to ecological civilization, with concurrent changes in human lifestyle and production methods that formed over hundreds of years. Ecological and environmental restoration will take a long time, and the transformation of concepts and values could take far more than a few years or even a few decades—perhaps even the full life span of people alive today. We suggest a roadmap of at least 100 years with both short- and medium-term goals for sustainable development plus the coordination of economic, social, and environmental safeguards, and efficient use of resources.
Tangible tools and means: Hard-technology innovation
Developing green hard technology involves focusing on resources, energy, ecology, and environment. They include technologies that help improve resource productivity (using fewer natural resources more efficiently), technologies that promote low-carbon use, recycling, decontamination, as well as technologies that reduce or reprocess waste emissions, and renewable energy technologies. Just as important are energy-saving and environmentally friendly buildings (building projects now account for over 20 percent of total energy consumption in China), green automobile technologies, eco-friendly agriculture technologies, and so on. And each of these must be adapted to best suit the characteristics of the regions in which they are employed.
Intangible tools and methods: Soft-technology innovation
The mission of soft technology is to transform many of the concepts related to green development so as to produce a roadmap and operational action plan. Soft technology plays a far more prominent role in green development than it did in the industrial economy, for hard technology alone can never substitute for the services provided by natural capital (Hawken et al. 2002, 182–187).
The key components of a green economy are (1) green industry (providing green products, equipment, technologies, and services), (2) green and clean production processes that reduce energy and material consumption as well as pollutant emissions during the production process, (3) green distribution, and (4) green consumption. Soft-technology innovation enhances the efficiency of hard-technology innovation, provides new core technologies for soft industries, serves to enhance capacity-building, provides ideas for further innovations, and continually fosters still more institutional innovation, especially ways to reduce damage to the environment (Jin 2011).
Improving the efficiency of technology transfer: China’s green technology is still in a period of transition; thus, effective technology transfer is essential. Even in developed countries, to successfully move from technology R&D to industrialization, effective technology transfer is critical. The ability to organize, manage, innovate, pioneer, and transfer technology is a key factor in soft technology. Some guidance may be found in the Clean Development Mechanism that arose out of the Kyoto Climate Conference, as well as utilizing the distinction between embodied technology transfer, which usually involves both hard technology and the more easily accomplished disembodied transfer, which involves knowledge sharing and support.
Providing the core technology for soft industries: One hallmark of soft industry is its ability to consume relatively low quantities of natural resources and energy (Jin 2011, Chapter 5). Another is that it makes the development of intellectual, cultural, social, and human resources its main objectives. All this is congruous with green development.
Enhancing implementation capacity: Implementation capacity is the ability to achieve strategic goals by relentlessly improving the ability to manage macro- to micro-level strategies. Such improvements include creating a culture of green development; selecting leaders with the vision and skills to manage transformational changes; more effective leadership, direction-setting, and decision-making; and devising comprehensive and multi-level business models that are consistently innovative (Jin 2011, Chapter 5). Also crucial are system design, institution building, and better public information and learning.
Soft-technology innovation: Soft-technology innovation provides innovative tools to drive green development. Examples include acknowledging that natural capital is no longer to be regarded as inexhaustible, that urban design technology and accounting technology should be freely shared, or that many different forms of capital should be taken into account when assessing progress toward development goals.
Soft-technology innovation and institutional design: One of the important missions of soft-technology innovation is to design institutional solutions for green development based upon sound ethics, to appropriately regulate and control hard technology, to achieve the positive benefits of technological applications and avoid negative outcomes—for example, not turning “innocent” hard technology into something harmful to human well-being or the environment, and limiting the potential for unintended side effects from new technologies. In the future, for society to truly achieve green development, the political, economic, and social activities of mankind will all have to adapt to the new economy (Jin 2011, 44). Therefore, it is necessary to create new institutional design principles and concepts (soft technologies) for politics, the economy, society, and culture. But to assure that these concepts (i.e., soft technologies) are sustainable for the long term (Jin 2011, 46), they must adhere to the principles of green development. This means that any modification of existing institutional designs and behavioral norms should motivate individuals to pursue the improvement of conditions for all and not restrict innovative behaviors. We may say that soft-technology innovation provides a basis for institutional innovation and enhances the environment for technology innovation.
Technologies are tools and means, not ends: It is worth noting that we believe both hard and soft technologies are to be considered tools and means. The ultimate goal of sustainable development is for human beings to live in a prosperous and peaceful world from one generation to the next, while continuing to enjoy the benefits of material, spiritual, and ecological civilization. Too often in the past people have tended to reverse the relationship between ends and means (Jin 2011, 341), regarding economic development and high technology usage as ends in themselves.
Creating the conditions to implement the green economy
Implementing the green economy requires creating the conditions that will attract investment, human resources, and policy inputs toward green development and increasing natural capital. Such conditions must balance hard and soft environment needs.
The term hard environment refers to the public and industrial infrastructure. This includes industrial facilities, roads and transport systems, and other tangible infrastructure.
The term soft environment (Jin 2011, 164) refers to the structure of systems, laws, regulations, policies, standards, cultural norms and values, as well as soft infrastructure such as interpersonal and electronic networks that operate to foster effective green development. This term may also cover numerous mandatory and optional institutional arrangements that help to bring socioeconomic development in line with the requirements of the ecosystem—for example, the design or reform of laws and regulations related to the economy, environment and resources, and the institutions supporting public and social objectives. It can even be extended to include supporting policies in the areas mentioned above, those governing international institutions and relationships, as well as the tendencies in society that favor green development, such as the resource conservation and environmental protection movements as well as advocates for green consumption.
Managing and supervising implementation
The success of green development depends on linking four major systems—strategic planning, tangible means, intangible approaches, and conditions of support. Follow-up monitoring, supervision/management, feedback, evaluation, and adjustment are also required for each action.
Strategic Management of Green Development in China
Like any revolution, green development must necessarily transform the concepts and behaviors of government, industry, business, and the whole of society. This will involve both bottom–up and top–down efforts. It also requires adopting a new long-term strategic management process focused on long-term goals at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels. This strategic management system can be broadly divided into six levels (see Figure 2 below). Its parts include (1) defining goals and creating a future vision, (2) developing a strategic deployment and support system, (3) the systematic integration of project management with macro-strategic system integration, (4) going beyond GDP to evaluate the overall performance of management personnel, (5) green transformation of the production mode and business model, and (6) determining the role of NGO and public participation. Together, these efforts are known as the Strategic Management Model of Green Development (SMMGD) for short.
Strategic Management Model of Green Development.
The SMMGD offers a roadmap for implementing green development and provides a set of quantitative tools for assessing sustainability at each stage of development.
Strategic goals and future vision
Part 1 of this paper addressed the state of China’s Green Development goals, citing conditions and examples of needed changes.
Strategic planning—Strategic deployment to meet goals and soft–hard balanced support systems
The term strategic deployment identifies a process through which the resources and potential resources within a region might be, or could become optimized, allocated, arranged, and laid out to achieve its strategic goals. In this process, the roadmap and methods (specifying implementation methods and implementation capacity-soft-technology innovation) should be identified and determined. It therefore includes not only arrangements for key technologies, projects, and industrial deployments but also for investment, development, and application of hard and soft capital, hard and soft infrastructure, capacity-building for strategic implementation, and so on (see Figure 3).
Soft–hard balanced strategic deployment and support system.
The principles of strategic deployment should include: strategic goals should not be economic profit alone but should also take into account social progress, ecological and environmental protection, construction, and optimum use and conservation of resources.
Multi-capital supports: soft (human) capital and hard (monetary) capital.
Focus major projects and advanced technologies on green development, and to adapt soft-technology R&D and soft industry to enable green development.
Core capacity-building is the cultivation of soft-technology talent.
Project and technology management
Strategic deployment is carried out in “projects.” Project management is the process of planning, organization, coordinating, controlling, and evaluating these, so as to achieve project objectives with less input. Strategies at the national or regional level often involve a large number of important large-scale projects that require very large-scale and complex project management capabilities. In general, each project competes for necessary supporting funds, resources, talent, infrastructure, preference, and institutional support. Moreover, the more support a project can obtain, the more maneuvering and innovation space it will have.
However, the resources that a country or region can mobilize are always limited. Thus, they must choose among projects and sequence them to meet long-term green development goals in line with the implementation roadmap. In this context, success does not depend on project management alone, but on other relevant actions, including the optimal availability, allocation, and overall management of strategic resources, the input–output management of soft and hard capital, hard infrastructure management, and environment innovation, especially as related to institutional mechanisms and policy. Therefore, project management must be integrated with these other management systems.
Strategic system integration management of key areas
As mentioned above, the long-term success of development efforts in any country or region will depend upon its economy, society, environment, and resources. Therefore, we have designed an integrated model for monitoring all four of these major strategic systems—that is, a quadruple bottom-line management system—as the basic management system of our green growth strategy. See Figure 4 below.
Development postures.
Figure 4 offers an easily visualized support tool for decision-making. As shown here, key characteristics of the quadruple bottom-line are (1) to define four quadrants that represent the four key strategic fields, namely, economy, society, environment, and natural resources, then to select representative indicators for each field to represent the optimum structure and functioning of each system; (2) displaying three rings, namely, warning line, comparative line, and target line, as on a radar chart to show the development posture of a given country or region; (3) we referred earlier to “the harmonious degree,” which measures the coordination among subsystems or elements with key strategic systems or within various fields to advance the principle of sustainable development; and finally (4) we use scenario analysis, adopting a forward-looking development perspective, so that early warning signals can be detected, and strategic deployment as well as overall strategy may be adjusted appropriately.
Beyond gross domestic product (GDP): Establishing a GPI system to better evaluate government performance
It is well known that GDP is the key indicator for measuring economic growth at present. However, GDP fails to take account of either the quality of economic growth or perceived national well-being as measured by the happiness index. We launched a GPI study of China in 2007 to conduct a comparative study with the GPIs of Japan and the United States.
The GPI includes separate social, economic, and environmental accounts (Talberth et al. 2007). GPI takes full account of positive factors that contribute to real progress, including weighted personal consumption, the monetary value of household work and parenting, the service value of household consumer durables and social capital stock, as well as the value of net capital investment and foreign borrowing. From these factors, it subtracts the costs from depleting natural resources and degrading the environment (e.g., from water and air pollution, loss of wetlands and farmland, loss of old-growth forests, the costs of long-term environmental damage—mainly from carbon dioxide emissions—etc.). Also deducted from GPI, totals are the costs incurred due to crime, accidents, litigation, natural disasters, and other negative factors, such as unequal income distribution, and costs associated with work and loss of leisure time (e.g., overwork, unemployment, and underemployment), urbanization, the costs of commuting, of automobile accidents, noise pollution, and other costs related to societal dysfunction. Our studies indicate that GPI can reflect the situation of national and regional economic health and social progress in a far more meaningful manner for both the public and policy makers, and it is an ideal tool for evaluating regional green development.
For China, thirty years of reform and opening to the world have brought rapid economic development. From 1980 to 2007, China’s GDP and GDP per capita increased by 13.9 times and 8.4 times, respectively. During this same time, China’s GPI and GPI per capita also increased by 9.4 times and 6.9 times, thereby indicating that while an economic miracle was being achieved, “genuine” progress also took place.
However, as revealed in Figure 5, tracks of GPI and GDP are different, and there is no direct linkage between them. Since the late 1980s, the gap between them has significantly expanded, and in the 1990s, GPI showed almost no growth. The ratio between GPI and GDP reflects the proportion of real progress. This ratio declined from 59 percent in 1980 to 10 percent by 2000, then rose to 38 percent in 2007. This rise is mainly because net capital investment has surged since 2003 and China’s foreign debt has been turned into a surplus since 2002. In the future, each province could build their own GPI system and use it to provide indicators for a comprehensive examination of local officials’ performance. And they might group the more than twenty available indicators of GPI into several clusters and use these as indicators for judging the performance of different departments. Increases in the GPI/GDP ratio might provide proof of reduced social and environmental costs and improved levels of sustainable development.
Comparison of China’s GDP and GPI trend (Jin 2010a).
Changing the development mode and corporate behaviors
To implement green development, changes in concept and transformation of government functions are certainly important. But ultimately the behaviors and business models of private enterprise must be changed as well. Currently, however, the business model of many companies aims merely to maximize economic profits. Such short-term behavior has created a series of social problems, in China including corporate scandals related to food safety, drug safety, unsafe disposal of toxic substances, ignoring the safety of employees and customers, serious pollution of the environment, and more. These scandals have led to deep introspection and reflection throughout Chinese society as a whole. In this regard, China’s Company Law, for the first time, specifies that “When undertaking business operations . . . a company shall act in good faith, [and] accept the supervision of the government and the general public.” In August 2010, the SASAC (State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council) asked that all Central Government-led enterprises release Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports within three years. By the end of December 2010, fifty-two Central Government-led enterprises had released a complete or substantially complete CSR report. The number of such Reports has continued to climb, and reached 703 in 2011, with the quality of the reports improved over previous years (SynTao).
However, releasing a CSR report is still far from fundamentally changing corporate behaviors. To establish a new corporate culture that values sustainable development and the implementation of a green business model, we introduced the Future 500 early in 2004, advocating that all businesses fulfill their economic, social, and environmental responsibilities and report a “triple bottom-line.” The Future 500 encourages enterprises to change their business model, from advocating “Big” enterprise to becoming a “Good” one.
In fact, under the conditions of a market economy, the role played by government administrative orders and economic leverage is limited. The Future 500 concept can establish a fair and scientific enterprise evaluation system, reestablish principles and standards, offer a model of “good” business, and evaluate and verify the degree of responsibility undertaken by each enterprise as a global citizen contributing to sustainable development both regionally and for Earth as a whole, as well as for future generations.
The Future 500 has developed a tool—Global Citizenship 360 (GC360) (see Figure 6)—which incorporates twenty-four internationally recognized standards or guidelines for audits and self-evaluation to help companies and suppliers practice a green business model of corporate governance and ethical conduct. This includes commitments to act responsibly toward employees by maintaining safe working conditions while safeguarding community and societal development, protecting the environment, and looking out for the well-being of users or consumers of its products. Using such audits, seven outstanding Chinese companies have now become Future 500 members (see Figure 7), and thirteen more have used the GC360 to test their own “triple bottom lines.”
Global Citizenship 360.
Future 500 members.
To widen public awareness and increase participation in the program, Future 500 China has successfully held four conferences (see Figure 8) with themes like, “Why China needs to introduce the Future 500,” “The Scientific Approach and the Enterprise of the Future,” “Corporate Triple Responsibility and the Harmonious Society,” and “Global Corporate Citizenship and The Future 500 China.” The Future 500 continues to work hard to involve more Chinese enterprises.
Future 500 conference.
The role of social organizations and public participation
Since China’s reform and opening up, progress in the democratization of political life has brought an increasingly relaxed atmosphere for the development of NGOs. China now boasts more than 3,500 NGOs, and these are playing a valuable role filling a space left vacant by past failures of the government and marketplace to achieve true green development.
Environmental NGOs are becoming a Green Power for effective environmental supervision that cannot be ignored. An early example was the “Friends of Nature” established in 1994, and others founded later include “Global Village,” “Green Earth Volunteers,” and the Alxa SEE Ecological Association (SEE). “The Green Choice Alliance,” organized and participated in by local NGOs, was established in 2007. It now has forty-one members and is actively evaluating the environmental performance of manufacturing enterprises.
These NGOs also play an important role in mobilizing public opinion to influence environmental policy. For example, according to a research report on pollution in the Chinese textile industry released by five environmental groups, the global supply chains of forty-eight textile brands, including Wal-Mart, H&M, Nike, and Adidas, illegally discharge wastewater in China. In 2010, thirty-four environmental groups jointly conducted research on heavy metal pollution by the IT industry, and issued letters to the CEOs of some twenty-nine well-known domestic and foreign IT brands, including Apple, pointing out pollution problems in their supply chains. In 2012, ten environmental NGOs jointly issued a survey report showing that excessive levels of heavy metal were contaminating the whitening-agents commonly used in Chinese cosmetics.
The “Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs,” founded in 2006 and led by Ma Jun, has made the greatest impact in China. The Institute quickly developed the China Water Pollution Map—the first public database of water pollution information in China. It included information on water quality, pollution types and sources, as well as detailed information on China’s thirty-one provinces and over three hundred municipal administrative regions. It also published the violation records of polluting industries in these various provinces and cities, including the sources of pollution and corporate feedback. Time magazine named Ma Jun as “2006 Green Person of the Year,” and has ranked him among the hundred most influential persons in the world. In 2012, he was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize.
However, most Chinese grassroots NGOs still face a difficult time, performing public service. They are subject to restrictions expanding their services, hampered by lack of public recognition, and, while they receive many donations, they are having difficulty getting these funds transferred into their bank accounts.
Assessment, feedback, control, and coordination
At each stage and at all levels of strategic management, a series of important decisions and actions are made. Therefore, some mechanism must be established, and a team assembled to focus on the whole strategic plan and roadmap. This team should take on the roles of tracking, supervising, regularly evaluating, and providing early warning, feedback, and helping make timely adjustments to ensure that the strategic mission’s goals are realized. Reviews and summaries of experiences and lessons cannot be made only at ten- to twenty-year intervals or after something goes wrong.
This will require that the strategy be transparent and open to the whole society. Transparency not only helps to harness the enthusiasm of people, and boost their morale, but it also aids in sound supervision. Periodic evaluations should include assessments by society as a whole, including supervisors, experts, and corporate internal evaluations. These can greatly facilitate timely amendment of possible deviations and help to maintain and promote the proper measures for achieving strategic objectives.
Establishing a sustained mechanism for long-term strategic management of green development
As described above, SMMGD provides a sustained mechanism for long-term strategic management, including integrated management of regional development and a method that will enable leaders to conduct scientific and democratic decision-making. SMMGD is also a closed-loop system, which circulates from macro- to micro-management. Only by implementing such a cyclical method can regular adjustments be made in long-term strategy so as to gradually approach the ultimate goal of green development at national and regional levels.
Conclusions
Creating a fully integrated system for green development
If we think of the implementation of green growth (consisting of strategic planning, tools and means, support conditions, and a tracking management system) as a horizontally integrated system, then the strategic management system of green development that consists of six levels from the macro to micro is a vertically integrated system. This relationship of vertical and horizontal integration is shown in Figure 9.
Tridimensional integrated system for green transition.
Our aim is to create a fully integrated system—a Tridimensional integrated system for green development though coordinating the two systems described in this paper, and foster continuous work on the management of green transition.
Another of the critical remaining questions is how the United States and China might benefit from each other’s experiences learning to craft green growth strategies. While the two countries are much different in terms of history and political structure, the appeal of a national environmental policy is difficult to ignore. The critical challenge for the United States, however, continues to be a lack of functional consensus on what a successful policy might be and how it can be achieved. The U.S. experience with measuring and monitoring can help the Chinese integrated management initiatives succeed.
Thanks to ongoing collaborative work across many disciplines, we now have an increasingly clear picture of the world’s future if we fail to effectively address climate change and the deterioration of the world’s natural resources and systems. Humans are facing a worldwide threat to our well-being that requires significant change by everyone. Our scientists—including the wide range of new biotechnologies—are also providing us with hope of breakthroughs to mitigate the damage and ideas for launching a new “green economy” and “green development” era.
To accomplish this, we need to transform our current culture of consumption to a culture of conservation before the consequences of climate change and resource depletion force change upon us. Many of the most serious impacts may not be fully felt for fifty to hundred years, and we need to generate a deep cultural concern for future generations and their well-being, so that we can confront the sacrifices we need to make now, to assure a sustainable world for them.
We also have challenges within our learning systems, our health and wellness systems, our food and agriculture systems, our security systems, and our financial systems. These also will require cultural and systemic changes, based on sound science and foresight. But our existing business and public institutions still focus on short-term crises and marginal reforms that attempt to restore balance under current system designs and appear incapable of dealing with large-scale anticipatory systemic transformational changes. Accordingly, it seems almost impossible to create green economic growth and sustainable development plus reform the learning, health, agriculture, security, and financial systems needed to support them.
In our judgment, futurists in cooperation with scientists, should take a leading role in synthesizing knowledge from all disciplines to better understand our complex systems, begin the design work needed to make these systems sustainable for the long term, and promote the cultural changes needed to anticipate, conserve, cooperate, and invest for the benefit of future generations.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.