Historical records of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were analyzed in two dated sediment cores (DH05 and DH11) collected from the continental shelf of the East China Sea (ECS) to investigate the influence of anthropogenic activities on marine sediment over the past century. The concentrations and fluxes of 15 PAHs were in the range of 28.6–96.5 ng g−1 and 7.6–35.2 ng cm−2 yr−1 in DH05 (1920s–2009), 18.8–76.4 ng g−1 and 13.9–30.9 ng cm−2 yr−1 in DH11 (1860s–2009). The sedimentary records of PAHs in the two cores generally reflected the economic development and energy consumption change in China. Identification of sources suggested that PAHs in ECS were predominantly from petrogenic origin and various combustion sources. A change of source from low- and moderate-temperature combustion to high-temperature combustion process was observed. Although a production ban of technical HCH and DDT was imposed in China in 1983, their sedimentary fluxes display increasing trends or strong rebounds from 1980s to 1990s as recorded in the core profiles. High proportions of DDD + DDE and γ-HCH suggested those OCPs mainly derived from early residuals. Temporal trends of PCBs presented relative high levels from 1970s to 1980s and high proportions of PCB congeners with 3–6 chlorines atoms indicated industrial sources.

Sediment cores from five lakes across the Tibetan Plateau were used as natural archives to study the time trends of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The depositional flux of PAHs generally showed an increasing trend from the deeper layers towards the upper layer sediments. The fluxes of PAHs were low with little variability before the 1950s, and then gradually increased to the late 1980s, with a faster increasing rate after the 1990s. This temporal pattern is clearly different compared with those remote lakes across the European mountains when PAHs started to decrease during the period 1960s–1980s. The difference of the temporal trend was attributed to differences in the economic development stages and energy structure between these regions. PAHs are dominated by the lighter 2&3-ring homologues with the averaged percentage over 87%, while it is notable that the percentage of heavier 4–6 ring PAHs generally increased in recent years, which suggests the contribution of local high-temperature combustion sources becoming more predominant.

China is at its most critical stage of outdoor air quality management. In order to prevent further deterioration of air quality and to protect human health, the Chinese government has made a series of attempts to reduce ambient air pollution. Unlike previous literature reviews on the widespread hazards of air pollution on health, this review article firstly summarized the existing evidence of human health benefits from intermittently improved outdoor air quality and intervention in China. Contents of this paper provide concrete and direct clue that improvement in outdoor air quality generates various health benefits in China, and confirm from a new perspective that it is worthwhile for China to shift its development strategy from economic growth to environmental economic sustainability. Greater emphasis on sustainable environment design, consistently strict regulatory enforcement, and specific monitoring actions should be regarded in China to decrease the health risks and to avoid long-term environmental threats.

Interaction between environmental degradation and economic growth is a growing matter of interest among policymakers. This paper examines the trilateral association between SO2 and NO2 emission, inequality in energy intensity, and economic growth by using simultaneous-equation panel data models for a panel of 139 Indian cities over the period 2001–2013. Our results indicate that there is evidence of feedback hypothesis between NO2 and SO2 emissions and economic growth, economic growth and inequality in energy intensity, and NO2 and SO2 emissions and inequality in energy intensity. The results also verified the existence of Environmental Kuznets curve for both of the pollutants. These results are of interest to environmental and economic policymakers as these can help in coming up with economic policies to ensure environmental sustainability and an inclusive economic growth.

This paper looks into the causal association between economic growth, CO2 emission, trade volume, and human development indicator for Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC countries) during 1980–2013. Following a generalized method of moments (GMM) technique, we have found out that bidirectional causality exists between CO2 emissions and economic growth. Feedback hypothesis is supported between CO2 emissions and human development, trade volume and human development, economic growth, and human development, and CO2 emissions and trade volume. Apart from finding out the unidirectional association from trade volume to economic growth, this study also validated the existence of Environmental Kuznets curve. Empirical findings of the study substantiate that the policymakers of the BRIC nations must focus on the green energy initiatives, either by in-house development or by technology transfer. This movement will allow them to control the ambient air pollution prevalent in these nations.

This paper attempts to investigate the emissions embodied in Australia’s economic growth and disaggregate primary energy sources used for electricity production. Using time series data over the period of 1990–2012, the ARDL bounds test approach to cointegration technique is applied to test the long-run association among the underlying variables. The regression results validate the long-run equilibrium relationship among all vectors and confirm that CO₂ emissions, economic growth, and disaggregate primary energy consumption impact each other in the long-run path. Afterwards, the long- and short-run analyses are conducted using error correction model. The results show that economic growth, coal, oil, gas, and hydro energy sources have positive and statistically significant impact on CO₂ emissions both in long and short run, with an exception of renewables which has negative impact only in the long run. The results conclude that Australia faces wide gap between emission abatement policies and targets. The country still relies on emission intensive fossil fuels (i.e., coal and oil) to meet the indigenous electricity demand.

Bosten Lake, a typical rump lake in an oasis in northwest China, was chosen to evaluate the distribution, sources, pollution status, and potential ecological risk of heavy metals. Sediment samples were collected from the lake, and results showed that the values of the eight heavy metals all fell within the Second Soil National Standard, while the average and maximum values of the metals were higher than the background values of the study. Multivariate statistical analysis showed that sediment concentrations of Cd, Pb, Hg, and Zn were mainly influenced by man sources. In comparison, Cu, Ni, Cr, and As were primarily natural in origin. Enrichment factor analysis (EF) and the geo-accumulation index evaluation method (I gₑₒ) showed that Cd, Hg, and Pb fell under low and partial serious pollution levels, while Zn, As, Cr, Ni, and Cu mainly were characterized under no pollution and low pollution levels. The potential ecological hazards index (RI) showed that among the eight heavy metals, Pb, Hg, and Cd posed the highest potential ecological risk, with potential ecological hazards indices (RI) of 29.06, 27.71, and 21.54 %, respectively. These findings demonstrated that recent economic development in the area of the basin has led to heavy metal accumulation in the surface sediments of the lake.

This study estimates the short- and long-run effects of Internet usage and economic growth on carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions using annual time series macro data for Australia for the period 1985–2012. Autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) bounds and Gregory–Hansen structural break cointegration tests are applied. ARDL estimates indicate no significant long-run relationship between Internet usage and CO₂ emissions, which implies that the rapid growth in Internet usage is still not an environmental threat for Australia. The study further indicates that higher level of economic growth is associated with lower level of CO₂ emissions; however, Internet usage and economic growth have no significant short-run relationship with CO₂ emissions. Financial development has both short-run and long-run significant positive association with CO₂ emissions. The findings offer support in favor of energy efficiency gains and a reduction in energy intensity in Australia. However, impulse response and variance decomposition analysis suggest that Internet usage, economic growth and financial development will continue to impact CO₂ emissions in the future, and as such, this study recommends that in addition to the existing measures to combat CO₂ emissions, Australia needs to exploit the potential of the Internet not only to reduce its own carbon footprint but also to utilize information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled emissions abatement potential to reduce emissions in various other sectors across the economy, such as, power, renewable energy especially in solar and wind energy, agriculture, transport and service.

This study investigates the relationship between rural non-point source (NPS) pollution and economic development in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area (TGRA) by using the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis for the first time. Five types of pollution indicators, namely, fertilizer input density (FD), pesticide input density (PD), agricultural film input density (AD), grain residues impact (GI), and livestock manure impact (MI), were selected as rural NPS pollutant variables. Rural net income per capita was used as the indicator of economic development. Pollution load was generated by agricultural inputs (consumption of fertilizer, pesticide, and agricultural film) and economic growth with invert U-shaped features. The predicted turning points for FD, PD, and AD were at rural net income per capita levels of 6167.64, 6205.02, and 4955.29 CNY, respectively, which were all surpassed. However, the features between agricultural waste outputs (grain residues and livestock manure) and economic growth were inconsistent with the EKC hypothesis, which reflected the current trends of agricultural economic structure in the TGRA. Given that several other factors aside from economic development level could influence the pollutant generation in rural NPS, a further examination with long-run data support should be performed to understand the relationship between rural NPS pollution and income level.

In Zaozhuang, economic development affects the discharge amount of industrial wastewater, chemical oxygen demand (COD), and ammonia nitrogen (NH₃-N). To reveal the trend of water environmental quality related to the economy in Zaozhuang, this paper simulated the relationships between industrial wastewater discharge, COD, NH₃-N load, and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita for Zaozhuang (2002–2012) using environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) models. The results showed that the added value of industrial GDP, the per capita GDP, and wastewater emission had average annual growth rates of 16.62, 16.19, and 17.89 %, respectively, from 2002 to 2012, while COD and NH₃-N emission in 2012, compared with 2002, showed average annual decreases of 10.70 and 31.12 %, respectively. The export of EKC models revealed that industrial wastewater discharge had a typical inverted-U-shaped relationship with per capita GDP. However, both COD and NH₃-N showed the binding curve of the left side of the “U” curve and left side U-shaped curve. The economy in Zaozhuang had been at the “fast-growing” stage, with low environmental pollution according to the industrial pollution level. In recent years, Zaozhuang has abated these heavy-pollution industries emphatically, so pollutants have been greatly reduced. Thus, Zaozhuang industrial wastewater treatment has been quite effective, with water quality improved significantly. The EKC models provided scientific evidence for estimating industrial wastewater discharge, COD, and NH₃-N load as well as their changeable trends for Zaozhuang from an economic perspective.