Climate Change and Green Growth: New Thinking Guest Editors' Words

• Author: Carlo Jaeger,Yongsheng Zhang
• Published date: 01 September 2014
• Date: 01 September 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-124X.2014.12080.x

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China & World Economy / 1–1, Vol. 22, No. 5, 2014

©2014 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Climate Change and Green Growth: New Thinking

Guest Editors’ Words

Yongsheng Zhang, Carlo Jaeger*

Over the past three decades, few factors have changed the world economy more than China’s

growth. Hundreds of millions of people have experienced massive improvements in their conditions

of living. As a result, the aspiration of billions of people worldwide to escape poverty has become

a realistic prospect in the 21st century. However, the Chinese experience also shows that realizing

this prospect comes with the huge challenge of reducing environmental disruption fast enough.

The fact that a century ago Chicago had air pollution as bad as Beijing has today does not

mean that this experience can be replicated again and again in the years to come. The fact that

climate risks from burning fossil fuels are hard to quantify does not mean that economic growth

should develop regardless of such risks. Green growth is not something nice to have once high

levels of affluence have been reached; in the coming decades it will be a global necessity.

Most economic analyses, however, suggest that efforts to reduce air pollution and

greenhouse gas emissions lead to lower growth and decreased competitiveness. As a

result, policy-makers are reluctant to translate generic declarations about green growth and

sustainable development into effective action, and both local and global environmental

problems are not addressed quickly enough.

The present special issue assembles papers that propose a different perspective for

the world economy in general and China in particular. They emphasize achieving green

growth using win-win approaches. This may well be the only way to realize a global economic

trajectory deserving the name of green growth. Of course, this implies that to persist in a

traditional growth model would not be Pareto optimal, so that there must be some external

effects, some non-convexities, some market imperfections, or combinations of these. The

papers provide a variety of pertinent examples.

Beyond the specifities of the cases presented, a broader perspective emerges: the

importance of complementing traditional analyses of economic problems with innovative

models and narratives that pay attention to the opportunities offered by accepting the twin

challenges of poverty reduction and environmental protection at a global scale. According

to this perspective, the world economy can indeed engage in a Pareto superior path of

green growth, and China can play a key role in this transition.

*Yongsheng Zhang, Senior Research Fellow, Development Research Center of the State Council of

China, Beijing, China. Email: zys@drc.gov.cn; Carlo Jaeger, Professor, Beijing Normal University,

Beijing. Email: carlo.jaeger@globalclimateforum.org.