China Sustainable Cities Report 2016: Measuring Ecological Input and Human Development

Foreword This October in Quito, Ecuador, the UN Conference on Human Settlements, Habitat III was held. This was the first major global conference under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, during which the participants in this conference adopted the New Urban Agenda, a framework that will guide sustainable urban development around the world for the next 20 years. The New Urban Agenda calls for cities to be safer, resilient and more sustainable, to lower carbon emissions and become cleaner and greener, and to be more inclusive, provide equal opportunities for all and fully respect the rights of migrants and refugees regardless of their status.

China has undergone a major philosophical shift in its approach to urbanization since the last Habitat conference in 1996 when the focus for the development of Chinese cities was rapid growth with little consideration of quality or long-term consequences. This focus on rapid growth was understandable and has had major positive impacts on poverty reduction. China has benefitted from policies that promoted basic education and healthcare from 1949, and then beginning in the Reform and Opening-up period, from fast economic growth.

We can see the impact of these policies in the China Sustainable Cities Index presented in this report. All of China’s major cities score highly on UNDP’s Human Development Index, which measures health, education and income. Each one of the 35 cities included in the report scores above the ‘high’ cut-off of 0.7 on the HDI scale, and 15 score above the very high cutoff of 0.8. This continual investment in health, education and economic growth means that major Chinese cities have reached the same level of development as developed countries globally.

However, this high level of human development has come at the expense of environmental well-being, and China is now at the point where environmental problems are threatening to undermine important gains in social development. This too is reflected in the China Sustainable Cities Index. The Ecological Input Index average has increased from 2015, meaning that overall the 35 cities included in the report are consuming more resources and producing more pollution.

Some cities have taken steps to improve by shifting to cleaner energy, investing in cleaner transportation, putting in policies to limit sprawl, and improving waste management. These efforts now need to be scaled up, not only to China’s major cities, but also to the smaller cities that will see the most significant growth over the next few years.