ABSTRACT
Any attempt to achieve global sustainability must take China into consideration. This is what Rees (2009) has called the ‘China syndrome’. China has become the world's second-largest economy, with a 9.9 per cent average annual growth rate for GDP from 1979 to 2010. However, this recent success in economic growth is offset by the side-effects of resource depletion, environmental degradation and an increasing ecological footprint (EF). China is the world's largest consumer of coal, copper, iron and steel (Li, 2006: 1) and the biggest consumer of energy (International Energy Agency, 2010). This massive consumption of resources and energy does not necessarily improve the quality of life. In fact, while the material living standards are increasing, national happiness is actually declining (Brockmann et al., 2009). According to the EF methodology, a means of measuring the impact of lifestyles on the natural environment, the current EF of China (2.4 global average hectares per person, or gha/person) more than twice overshoots its biocapacity (Global Footprint Network, 2011a), and is beyond the fair earth share of 1.9 gha/person (Paredis et al., 2008: 62). Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that China's EF is still smaller than the global average of 2.6 gha/person (Global Footprint Network, 2011b). This may be the result of a large proportion of the population following a low-environmental-impact way of life in rural areas, as the EF of Chinese cities is 1.4 to 2.5 times greater than that of the countryside (WWF, 2010).
