Table 1.
China and India’s contributions to, or experience of, environmental issues, both problems and solutions. The selection of issues is guided by the planetary boundaries concept (Steffen et al. 2015), as shown in the second column; we also indicate roughly the scale of the impacts of the issue and whether it is constrained to the country itself (‘local’), or is regional or global. The number represents the global rank of the country in its contribution to a problem/solution. Note that most rows indicate a total for the whole country. In contrast, air pollution metrics (ozone, PM2.5), estimated by the Health Effects Institute, represent population-weighted annual average concentrations (https://www.stateofglobalair.org/). The Environmental Performance Index (EPI; https://epi.yale.edu/)’s 2020 report ranks 180 countries, using seven metrics for their biodiversity index and three metrics for their ecosystem services index, and using cumulatively seven data sources. For the EPI indices, smaller numbers indicate better performance
| Environmental issue | Planetary boundary | Impact level | Unit | China | India | Year of assessment | References |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Problems | |||||||
| CO2 emissions | Climate change; ocean acidification | Global | MtCO2e | 1 | 3 | 2018 | https://www.climatewatchdata.org/ghg-emissions |
| Other greenhouse gases (CH4, N2O, F-gas) | Climate change | Global | MtCO2e | 1 | 3 | 2018 | https://www.climatewatchdata.org/ghg-emissions |
| Nitrogen deposition | Biochemical flow | Regional | kg | 1 | 2 | 2016 | Ackerman et al. (2019) |
| Mercury emission | Biochemical flow | Regional | Tonnes | 1 | 4 | 2015 | AMAP/UN Environment (2019) |
| Plastic waste production | Novel entities | Regional (ocean circulation)/local | Million metric tons | 1 | 2 | 2015 | Lebreton and Andrady (2019) |
| Waste from electrical and electronic equipment | Novel entities | Local | Million metric tonnes | 1 | 4 | 2016 | Baldé et al. (2017) |
| DDT | Novel entities | Regional (trans-boundary wildlife)/local | Tonnes produced | 3 | 4 | Through 2019 | Fiedler et al. (2019) |
| Atmospheric sulfur (SO2) | Aerosol loading | Local | Tg | 1 | 2 | 2015 | Aas et al. (2019) |
| Ambient ozone (O3) pollution | Aerosol loading | Local | ppb | 44 | 3 | 2019 | https://www.stateofglobalair.org |
| Ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) | Aerosol loading | Local | µg/m3 | 29 | 1 | 2019 | https://www.stateofglobalair.org |
| Annual freshwater withdrawals | Freshwater | Regional/local | Cubic meters | 2 | 1 | 2010–2014 | https://data.worldbank.org/indicator |
| Import of palm oil | Land-use change | Global/regional | Million tonnes | 2 | 1 | 2018 | DAC&FW (2019) |
| Import of roundwood | Land-use change | Global/regional | Million m3 | 1 | 7 | 2018 | FAO (2018) |
| Ecosystem services | Land-use change | Local | Country ranking by EPI | 90 | 93 | 2020 ranking | https://epi.yale.edu |
| Biodiversity conservation | Biosphere integrity | Local/regional (trans-boundary species) | Country ranking by EPI | 172 | 148 | 2020 ranking | https://epi.yale.edu |
| Solutions | |||||||
| Afforestation (in) | Land-use change | Global (climate change mitigation) | Million hectares | 1 | 6 | 2020 | FAO (2020) |
| Net change in leaf area (2000–2017) | Climate change mitigation | Global | % | 1 | 2 | 2017 | Chen et al. (2019) |
| Electric car market shares | Climate change mitigation | Global | % | 13 | 28 | 2020 | IEA (2021) |
| Wind electricity generation | Climate change mitigation | Global | GWh | 1 | 4 | 2018 | IEA (2020) |
| Solar PV electricity generation | Climate change mitigation | Global | GWh | 1 | 5 | 2018 | IEA (2020) |