Study On Ecological Footprint Dynamic Change And Forecast Of Sichuan Province

Protecting ecological environment and implementing the sustainabledevelopmental strategy to realize the economy and ecological environment coordinativedevelopment, is an urgent and arduous task all the world. To weigh a region whether it hasrealized the sustainable development, it must quantitatively investigate the regionaldevelopment condition as well as make a comparison between the regional developmentconditions, namely quantitatively measuring sustainable development condition, which is thepremise and foundation of making resources policy, and one of keys of the current sustainabledevelopment research.Through a group of quantitative indexes which based on the land area, the ecologicalfootprint analysis appraises the influence that humanity have on the global ecosystem bymeasuring the ecologically productive area humanity use in order to maintain their survival. Itprovides a new view for studying and measuring the sustainable development, and has wideapplication scope. Through looking up previous statistics yearbook of Sichuan Province, thispaper applied the ecological footprint analysis to calculate and analyze the ecological footprintand correlative indexes from 1995 to 2004, and quantitatively evaluated the sustainabledevelopment degree of ecological and economic system, then applied grey theory to forecastthe development tendency of ecological footprint, the ecological carrying capacity andecological deficit from 2005 to 2010, proposed the countermeasures how to alleviate theecological deficit and realize the sustainable development. Conclusions are drawn as follows:(1) The per capita ecological footprint demand and supply of Sichuan province arerespectively 3.5898ha and 0.6582ha, the per capita ecological deficit reaches as high as2.9316ha, the regional ecological deficit is 239.2728 million ha in 2004, so it is not in ansustainable development condition. Looking from the per capita ecological footprint supplyand demand structure, the ecological and economical system has remarkable dissymmetrybetween the supply structure of ecologically productive area and the social and economicaldevelopment demand structure; Looking from the per capita ecological footprint demand structure, cultivated land demand is t.he biggest one, which occupies the entire ecologicalfootprint demand 74.14%; In the per capita ecological footprint supply structure, the cultivatedland and forest land account for bigger proportions, respectively 44.41% and 40.08%. Thecomparison with other areas also indicates that the current development situation of SichuanProvince is not optimistic.(2) The per capita ecological footprint basically increases progressively year by year;the per capita ecological carrying capacity assumes the fluctuant change which first increasesprogressively year by year, then decreases progressively, and increases progressively again.;the per capita ecological deficit quantity expands unceasingly, and increases continually,especially the deficit quantity of cultivated land increases swiftly. Looking from thecorrelative indexes of ecological footprint, the ecological footprint of 10 thousand Yuandecreases year by year, ecological footprint multiplicity unceasingly increases progressively,the development ability of the ecological and economic system enhances year by year on thewhole, the ecological carrying degree and the ecological footprint index both basically declinecontinuously. These indicate that the resource use benefit enhances continuously, theecological footprint structure gradually trends to average and rationalization, the developmentspace of ecological carrying capacity is more and more small, the unsustainable developmentdegree worsens unceasingly.(3) According to the existing development pattern, through GM(1, 1)model forecast,the per capita ecological footprint is 3.9919ha, the per capita ecological carrying capacity andper capita ecological deficit are respectively 0.6454ha and 3.3465ha, the ecological footprintsupply gap reaches 5.19 times in 2010 of Sichuan Province. This means that the humanactivity intensity of Sichuan Province will go far beyond the ecosystem carrying capacityscope in the future, the sustainable development will be faced with a more stern test. Therefore,powerful measures must be taken to alleviate the pressure which the humanity bring to theecosystem because of excessive development and use, and realize the sustainable developmentof society, economy and ecology.(4) In order to reduce the ecological deficit and realize the region sustainabledevelopment under the condition of not reducing people's living standards in Sichuan Province,specific measures that should be taken are as follows: controlling the population scale,improving the human quality; exploiting the reserve land resource, establishing and perfecting the cultivated land protection system; optimizing the industrial structure, strengthening thetechnical innovation; using existing resource storage quantity effectively, establishing socialproducing and consuming system that conserves resource; improving the basic producingconditions of agriculture, improving the agricultural synthetical productivity; exploiting waterand electricity and other non-carbon resources, reducing the fossil energy expense; enrichingbiological product multiplicity, satisfying human expense demand diversification.