Decoupling analysis between economic growth and resources environment in Central Plains Urban Agglomeration

Abstract Once, the fast-growing economy has dependence on resources and environment, especially in Central Plains Urban Agglomeration (CPUA). Assessing the relationship between economic growth and resources and environment can be helpful in planning future region development. As there were fewer researches on the decoupling analysis in CPUA, therefore, according to the decoupling index designed by Tapio, this paper connected the resources and the environment to describe the comprehensive decoupling state of economic growth and resources environment as a whole with the latest available data in 2004–2015. The results showed that: (1) The change of environmental decoupling index had a greater impact on the comprehensive decoupling index. Economic growth has been less dependent on resources consumption and environment pollution since 2011, and the relationship between economic growth and resources environment reached strong decoupling in 2015. (2) The decoupling state was towards the direction of strong decoupling in Luoyang, Pingdingshan, Jiaozuo, Xuchang, Nanyang, and Xinyang. The economic growth was less dependent on resources consumption and the environment pollution. (3) Economic growth depended strongly on resources consumption and environment pollution in Changzhi, Jincheng, Heze, and Anyang. They had not yet achieved the strong decoupling state among economic growth, resources and the environment. Thus, the policy implementations were put forward to realize strong decoupling in CPUA.