Measuring China's Circular Economy

Unique environmental and economic challenges provide a laboratory for developing new indicator systems. Facing significant natural resource consumption, environmental degradation, and resulting public frustration, China's new administration heightened attention on ecological modernization, green growth, and low carbon development, with a national circular economy (CE) strategy (1). The 2012 Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development emphasized the need to develop indicators of progress that decouple economic growth and environmental burden (2). We describe how China presents unique opportunities to develop new environmental indicator systems for measuring and managing CE.

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