Analysis of relationship between Beijing's environment and development based on Environmental Kuznets Curve

• An econometric model of EKC using data over 1990–2014 is built for Beijing.
• A hypothesis is developed to verify the relationship between economy and environment.
• The intensity of most pollutants have arrived at the turning point around 2006.
• The total amount of most emissions remain at a high level in Beijing.
• Drive-Pressure-State-Impact-Response model is used to analyze the driving factors.

Urbanization nowadays is a very important driving force for China's social and economic development, but the resource shortage and pollution accompanied have troubled China especially in the urban areas. As the capital of China, Beijing is a mega-city and densely populated. Its development and prosperity is supported by a large amount of material consumption, rendering a severe shortage of natural resources and serious pollution. Underlying the premise of maintaining its development and prosperity, Beijing is facing an enormous challenge in dealing with heavy pollution load. Therefore, it is a very important step to decouple the relationship between economic development and environmental pollution. This paper makes a study on the relationship between the economic growth and pollution load for Beijing based on the analysis of Environmental Kuznets Curves (EKC) which builds an econometric model using data over the period 1990–2014. We found the intensity of most pollutants have arrived at the turning point around 2006 while the total amount of most emissions remain at a high level, this is a favorable initiation for the transforming the development patterns as it has begun to decouple the pollution intensity and economy. Based on the statistics, this paper further analyzes the driving factors behind the active change. We found that the adjustment of industrial structure, a reasonable city planning, powerful measures in pollutants control and technology advance, contribute a lot to the transformation. Especially in the recent years, Beijing and correlative regions took joint measures to prevent and reduce air pollution, which have an apparent functions. Finally, this paper proposes several suggestions for Beijing to decouple the economic growth and environmental pollution load, based on these important conclusions.