Balance between poverty alleviation and air pollutant reduction in China

Abstract

Key targets of the sustainable development goals might be in contradiction to each other. For example, poverty alleviation may exacerbate air pollution by increasing production and associated emissions. This paper investigates the potential impacts of achieving different poverty eradication goals on typical air pollutants in China by capturing household consumption patterns for different income groups and locations, and linking it to China’s multi-regional input-output table and various scenarios. We find that ending extreme poverty, i.e. lifting people above the poverty line of USD 1.90 a day in 2011 purchasing power parity (PPP), increases China’s household emissions by only less than 0.6%. The contribution increases to 2.4%–4.4% when adopting the USD 3.20 PPP poverty line for lower-middle-income countries. Technical improvements in economic sectors can easily offset poverty-alleviation-induced emissions in both scenarios. Nevertheless, when moving all impoverished residents below the USD 5.50 PPP poverty line for upper-middle-income countries, household emissions in China would increase significantly by 18.5%–22.3%. Counteracting these additional emissions would require national emission intensity in production to decrease by 23.7% for SO2, 13.6% for NOx, 82.1% for PM2.5, and 58.0% for PM10. Required synergies between poverty alleviation and emission reduction call for changes in household lifestyles and production.