Theory And Practice Of Environmental Security In Gansu Province

The rapid development of modern industrial civilization has created unprecedented material and spiritual wealth for mankind, unfortunately it also produced great negative impact for human life. Environment problems are emerging increasingly, such as the explosion caused by the greenhouse effect, the global climate change, the ozone depletion, forest vegetation decline, land desertification, biological species reduction, public nuisance events frequent. So, environmental security problem has already became common concern. Therefore, by reviewing the development process of environmental security theory and studying the environmental security evaluation principles and methods, this study aims to discuss the possible factors of environmental security and put forward the countermeasures for maintaining environmental security. It is expected that the study could provide guides to local sustainable developments.Gansu province is located in north-western China, and in the region that connect Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and Loess Plateau, Mongolia Plateau;between latitude 32°31'--42°57'N, and longitude 92°13'-108°46'E, covering 450,000km2,about 4.727% of China. It's not only undeveloped but also fragile ecological environment. Meanwhile, it is difficult to protect and build the ecological environment due to the limited environment capacity. So the diverse and frail natural ecological environment type has became the prominent problem for Gansu province economic and social developments.Aiming at the severe environmental security situation in Gansu province, this study systematically summarized the evolution of environmental security. Considering the undeveloped economic level and fragile ecological environment, based on sustainable development theory, human-environment system theory, environmental bearing capacity theory, circular economy theory and P-S-R conceptual model, the methods, principles, measurement of environmental security evaluation and the selection of evaluation index have been probed in this study. Then, environmental security evaluation system has been built. Furthermore, environmental security conditions in Gansu province, provincial capital Lanzhou, resource-based city Qingyang and agriculture-based city Pingliang have been evaluated, respectively. Finally, the major factors influencing environmental security have been analyzed. The results were as follows:(1) The environment security in Gansu was in the Medium Level and a typical fluctuating characteristics form 2003 to 2008 was observed. The overall environment security improved slowly.(2) The environmental security index was 0.6960 in Lanzhou City in 2007, totally it was in relatively environmental security level(3) The environmental security in the resource-based city Qingyang was in the Good Level (II), much higher than that in agriculture city Pingliang where environmental security was in the Medium Level(III) in 2008.Evaluation results indicated that the factors influencing Gansu province's environmental security includes:a natural increase in population by 1.3 percent every year from 2003 to 2008; an increase in CO2 emission per captal annual coal consumption. Especially, it was noted that Gansu was suffered from drought due to scarce precipitation, leading to severe soil erosion and desertification; Emissions of SO2 and CO2 were increased year by year because of the economic development and so on.Furthermore, some suggestions and approaches were put forward to improve the environmental security level in Gansu province. Firstly, promotion for establishment of water-saving society is urgent. Secondly, soil erosion control and regional ecological security construction must be strengthed; Thirdly energy saving and emission reduction must be emphasized especially; Finally, comphensive measures and many attempts should be taken to maintain environmental security and make ecnomic and social develop sustainably in Gansu province.