Macroeconomic assessment of the environmental quality of economic growth at the regional level

Abstract

The research featured a macroeconomic assessment of the quality of economic growth. The analysis was based on various environmental factors, obtained in the process of strategic environmental assessment of the developmental priorities of the Kemerovo region in 2002–2020. The research objective was to determine the effect of environmental factors on eco-intensity and economic growth in this resource-based region in the context of global and national environmental challenges. The paper presents an overview of the methods of ecological and economic analysis suitable for strategic environmental assessment. The study featured mathematical methods of calculating the economic eco-intensity and the decoupling effect, as well as the model of economic growth developed by P. Victor. The decoupling effect was rather weak for the main types of negative impact, i.e. pollution, waste generation, disturbed lands, etc. The only green decoupling effect was revealed by the volume of contaminated wastewater. P. Victor's extended model showed the predominance of "brown" economic growth, while the increase in the carbon intensity of the gross domestic product for methane coincided with the significant decrease in the economic development of the region. The article also introduces a forecast of the economic development of the Kemerovo region, based on global and national trends of decarbonization. Transition to the use of the best available technologies should reduce the level of eco-intensity and increase the rate of decarbonization, both in the main industries and in methane processing.