Environment Protection Evaluation of 30 Provinces in China Using Gray Relational Analysis

This paper evaluates the environment protection level of 30 Provinces in China using grey relational analysis based on 10 indicators which can be divided into 3 groups: waste discharge, environmental remediation and resource utilization. Evaluation has been done on both integrated and separate according to 3 kinds of indicators. Result shows that the best provinces in environment protection are Zhejiang, Tianjin and Beijing while the worst provinces are Ningxia, Qinghai and Xinjiang. The level of environment protection in the eastern coastal areas is relatively higher, and the level of environmental protection in northwest regions is relatively low. Provinces that have higher GDP per capita are likely to have higher environment protection, and vice versa. Most provinces are unbalanced in the 3 aspects and few provinces managed a full range environment protection. Cities are found to be better in waste discharge and resource utilization while resourcebased provinces are on the contrary.