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Перспективы перехода стран БРИКС к модели устойчивого развития (на примерах Бразилии и Китая)
The concept of sustainable development created under the auspices of the United Nations assumes that developing countries can simultaneously carry out a rapid economic growth and solve environmental conservation problems as well. However, in reality, it takes a long way to achieve such a balance. The hypothesis of the "environmental Kuznets curve" (EKC) provides that in the early stages of industrialization, pollution and environmental degradation in the country increase, but after reaching a certain level of per capita GDP, the trend changes to the opposite. In other words, "sustainable development" becomes possible only with a relatively high level of per capita income. These patterns are traced in the article on the examples of the two BRICS states: Brazil, as a resource-rich country with a pluralistic political system, and China, as a resource-deficient country with a partocratic political regime.
Brazil is a classic example of a country generously provided with all the necessary resources for extensive growth. Therefore, for her, the transition to intensive growth is not an existential task. However, the possession of such natural resources imposes certain obligations on the country to preserve them.
In the Chinese Party-state, the set of environmental policy tools is not limited only to legal and economic ones, it also includes political and ideological methods of influencing society. However, their effectiveness is relatively low, mainly due to the inseparability of bureaucratic and corporate elites. The preservation of the "soft budget constraints", i.e. the availability of state financing for enterprises, provokes the creation of new polluting production facilities.
Since the mid-2010s, the environmental situation in China has begun to change for the better, which is due to both the strengthening of centralism in environmental policy and the intensification of the activities of environmental non-governmental organizations. Perhaps the "turning point" of the EKC has already been passed, at least in the most developed eastern provinces of China. However, further movement along the EKC may be hindered by the established political and economic institutions themselves. Studying the experience of both Brazil and China is useful for an adequate prediction of the environmental problems that Russia may face in the event of accelerated economic growth.