CDM Projects and Its Impact on Air Pollution: A Panel Data Study of 30 Cities in China

As one of the three mechanisms for reducing trans-boundary greenhouse gas emissions stipulated in the Kyoto Protocol, the CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) project was introduced in China as early as 2005; nowadays, great progress has been made in this field. Scholars have explored the impacts of the CDM projects on the air pollution control for over a decade. The article first summarizes the development of the first batch of the Chinese CDM projects, analyzing the panel data of 30 cities in China from 2006 to 2015 to investigate the impacts of the CDM projects on the air quality of the 30 capital cities. Meanwhile, the relationship between the number of the CDM projects and the GDP, the population size, and the government’s investment in industrial pollution control of each region is explored. The results show that the CDM projects positively impact air pollution control, and that they are positively correlated with the GDP, CPI and the population size. Moreover, there is a positive correlation between the government’s investment in industrial pollution control and the air quality but with a certain degree of hysteresis. The above findings provide the implications for the future development of the CDM projects including, these programs should be guided by the national policies and promoted as market-led economic projects, seeking to obtain the capital and technical support from developed countries so as to facilitate the Chinese enterprises’ environmental protection endeavors and the government should gradually guide the local enterprises’ input of capital and technology in order to achieve better results of air pollution control.