Abstract
In the last 30 years, China’s rapid economic development has been accompanied by serious environmental pollution problems. In 2007, the overall waste management cost is estimated to have reached about 230.5 bil CNY and 0.87 % of China’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). To reduce the heavy environmental burden andrealise the transformation of economic structure, the government proposed to pursue sustainable development in the 13th National Five-Year Plan (2015 - 2020). The objective of this paper is to evaluate the social-economic features of China’s waste management activities in different sustainable scenarios. Toachieve this goal, this paper established a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) distinguishing the waste management sectors from open sources, and then constructed a country-level dynamic multi-sectoral Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model. Using this model, this paper analysed the situation of China’s waste management sectors in three Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs) until 2030. The simulation results showed that in a high sustainable scenario, the waste management cost will rise to 323.7 bil CNY in 2030, and its weight of GDP will drop to 0.23 %. In a middle road scenario and a rocky road scenario, the GDP losses in 2030 are 355.8 bil CNY and 376.9 bil CNY with a weight of 0.27 % and 0.30 %.
