Research On Regional Externalities Of Ecologically Fragile Areas

The blind seeking of long-term economic growth has led to increasingly acutecontradictions between economic growth and protection of natural capitalsin ecologicallyfragile areas. Ecologically fragile areas in China faced ecological and environmentaldegradation, the expansion of regional disparities, fairness and efficiency confrontation andmany other problems in their developing process. The crux of these problems is the spatialallocation of resources. Long-established and continues administrative-economicregionsystem has made the spatial allocation of population and economic activities are not basedon a region’s carrying capacity of resources, environment and ecosystem.The administrativeboundaries and the boundaries of ecosystem are very different. Thus the fragmentation andvicious competition between administrative regions have greatly destructed the integrity ofecosystem.The sustainable development of ecological fragile area to some extent can beconsidered that the issue is not just its own problems, but involves other related regions. It’sa problem of regional externalities.Regional externality is a research perspective to regional relations. It is also animportant research field for geography.This dissertation starts from the socio-economiccharacteristics and evolution of the ecologically fragile areas, analyzed the plight in theirdeveloping process. I tackle on this work the theoretical framework of regional externalityand then try to analyze the ecological fragile areas through this framework and focus on twoaspects: the natural resources and the construction of ecosystem. Finally, this dissertation putforward some recommendations and policies to solve the regional externality problems andpromote the development of ecologically fragile areas. The structure of this dissertation is asfollows：The first chapter is the introduction of the research. The main function oriented zoninglay out the restricted development zones which face the contradiction between developmentand protection under the regional system of property rights. The ecologically fragile areasare typical restricted regions in China. Thus, the regional relations have become an importantinfluencing factor for the development of those regions. In this part I summarize also theecologically fragile areas and regional externalities from both domestic and foreign in termsof both theoretical and practical significance of this research to clarify the aims, researchideas, research methods and technologies routes.The second chapter defines the concept and connotation of the ecologically fragile areas.I analyze the causes and types of the fragile environment and summarize the generalsocio-economic characteristics of the ecologically fragile areas from the economically backward regions, rural areas and minority areas. According to the environmental protectionand economic development issues, there are different stages for this problem,from long-termneglect to the preliminary understanding of great importance and now to the start attach greatimportance. Every stage has very different socio-economic characteristics.The third chapter discusses the plight for development.Ecologically fragile areas subjectto the limitations of the environmental carrying capacity, its economic development to someextent, is the expense of the environment.The future development of the resources andenvironment carrying capacity is not optimistic. It will seriously hamper the furthereconomic and social development. Furthermore I explore the plight facing the developmentof ecologically fragile areas due to the lack of the right to development from ecologicalmigration and industrial development. The enormous pressure of ecological poverty;economic development and environmental protection become increasingly acutecontradictions and contradictions of human-land relationship has become increasinglyprominent.The fourth chapter is the theoretical study of the regional externality. Property region isan important feature in the administrative-economic region system. In the other hand,geographical movement makes a region to have external influences. Based on the abovepoints of view, the regional externality has become an important factor in regionaldevelopment. This chapter builds theoretical framework and analyze the external features ofecologically fragile areas, will lay a solid theoretical foundation for the dissertation.The fifth Chapter is to explore the regional externalities of the ecologically fragile areasfrom natural resource development and ecological construction,pointing out that thedevelopment and utilization of natural resources to meet the social and economicdevelopment needs, while also inevitably bring ecological destruction and environmentalpollution. Through the geographical movement, the internal changes will transmit to outside.Should their development constraints are the deprivation of its right to participate in marketcompetition.Ecological construction can create a new ecosystem services, with theeffectiveness of external ecological services, but its costs and benefits not well represented inthe production and management activities, resulting in the imbalance between the ecological,environmental and economic interests in the region, as well as easy to overcome theproblems on the sharing of the costs of economic development and ecological protection.Starting from the basic theory mentioned above, the basic idea of chapter IV is tointernalize the externalities, to overcome the idea of regional externalities and find out somepractical policies to promote the sustainable development of ecologically fragile areas.The regional externality is a new research perspective of regional relations in social andeconomic developing process, and then the ecologically fragile area is a typical kind of disadvantaged area. This dissertation combines the typical area with the new researchperspective. It’s theoretical and practical significance are all very obvious.