Study On Sustainable Population Size And Economic Scale Of Limited Development Zone In Ningxia

The sustainable development of areas with fragile ecological environment has always been the focus and difficulty of discussion.Ningxia’s limited development ecological zone has the dual attributes of ecological fragility and underdevelopment,and the contradiction between restriction and development is even stronger.At present,the national and provincial levels only delineate the space and guide the direction of "how large the scale of development and how to determine how to achieve sustainability",and do not quantitatively put forward the requirements of the scale of development,resulting in challenges to the operability of limited development.Focusing on the problem of "how large can the development be sustainable",this study selects seven counties of Ningxia’s limited development ecological zone as the object,and uses graphical analysis methods and extended exergy analysis to discuss the spatiotemporal characteristics of population size and economic scale,the temporal and spatial characteristics and sources of resource&environmental pressure,and analyzes the interaction coupling mechanism between population size and economic scale,and resource&environmental pressure.On this basis,the population size and environment quality model method and resource carrying capacity evaluation method are used to evaluate the sustainable population size and economic scale under resource and environmental constraints.The results show:(1)Since the reform and opening up,the population size of Ningxia’s limited development ecological zone has first continued to rise and then fluctuated to a relatively stable level,and the total economic scale and per capita value have continued to grow steadily.Counties of Haiyuan,Tongxin and Xiji have a large population base,and their birth rates and natural growth rates are also relatively high,which is greatly related to the proportion of ethnic minority population.Therefore,the formulation of future population policy should pay attention to cultural characteristics and concepts.The difference between the economic scale and the per capita economic scale of each county is obvious,Yanchi County has the largest contribution to the regional economy,Jingyuan County is the smallest,and only Yanchi County and Pengyang County have a per capita economic scale higher than the regional average.(2)From 2005 to 2020,the resource consumption and environmental pollution of Ningxia’s limited development ecological zone increased nearly linearly,and the growth rate of environmental pollution was significantly higher than that of resource consumption,and the gap between the two will continue to widen.Pressure on resources and the environment is gradually tilted towards environmental pollution.In the future,while paying attention to resource consumption,the government and relevant departments should take environmental pollution as the focus of regional ecological environment policy regulation.The cost of environmental pollution remediation mainly comes from greenhouse gas emissions,which is a warning of the urgent need to address and control greenhouse gases.Besides,fossil fuel combustion,carbon dioxide produced by industrial production processes and methane produced by animal husbandry on the environment shouldn’t be ignored.Therefore,under the new situation,the population and economic scale of Ningxia’s limited development ecological zone may be overloaded again.The growth of population&economic scale has a coercive effect on resources and environment by expanding resource consumption and increasing pollution emission level;Resource&environmental pressure has a restraining effect on the economic scale of the population by reducing the comfort of living environment and the competitiveness of investment environment,increasing the production and living costs of enterprises and residents,affecting residents’ health or disastrous events.(3)The relationship between environmental quality and population size in Ningxia’s limited development ecological zone showed an inverted N-shaped relationship,and the theoretical inflection point values of the average population size of each county were 171,600 and 384,300,respectively.Except for Xiji,Tongxin and Haiyuan,the population size and carrying capacity of the other counties are in the stage of diminishing marginal effect of environmental quality,and there is a contradiction between the growth of population size and the decline of environmental quality.Therefore,reasonable control of population size can keep the bottom line of environmental quality.Under the constraints of land resources,Jingyuan County can accommodate the smallest number of people,Haiyuan County is the largest Besides,Jingyuan County can carry the smallest economic scale,Yanchi County is the largest.The population and economy of each county are not overloaded.Under the constraint of water resources,Jingyuan County can carry the largest population and economic scale,Pengyang County is the smallest,and the population and economy are overloaded except for Jingyuan,Lund and Tongxin counties.Except for Jingyuan County and Longde County,the remaining counties are generally more severely constrained by water resources than land resources.Therefore,water resources protection is the top priority in the study area.To sum up,the four counties of Xiji,Pengyang,Yanchi and Haiyuan have exceeded the maximum carrying scale of water and land resources,the remaining bearable population and economic scale of Longde County are the largest,and Jingyuan County and Tongxin County are relatively small.(4)With environmental quality,water and soil resource constraints as the boundary,The estimated sustainable population size of the 7 counties is 1,307,900-1,314,300 people.The counties are:229,000 in Xiji County,109,500 in Longde,85,700 in Jingyuan County,100,900 in Pengyang County,326,400 in Haiyuan County,135,600 in Yanchi County,and 320,800-327,200 in Tongxin County.According to the current resource consumption level and ecological environment pressure intensity,with the constant price in 2020,the overall sustainable economic scale of the 7 counties is 43.71-43.92 billion yuan.The counties are:5.67 billion yuan in Xiji County,3.47 billion yuan in Longde County,2.19 billion yuan in Jingyuan County,4.33 billion yuan in Pengyang County,7.89 billion yuan in Haiyuan County,9.85 billion yuan in Yanchi County,and 10.31-10.52 billion yuan in Tongxin County.Based on the above analysis,the following policy recommendations are put forward:(1)Pay attention to environmental pollution and actively promote the policy of paid use and trading of pollutant discharge rights.(2)Attach importance to greenhouse gas emission and control,and build a demonstration ecological zone for low-carbon development.(3)Rationally regulate the population and economic scale of ecological areas.(4)Pay attention to cultural characteristics and concepts,and develop differentiated population size control policies.(5)Advocate water conservation and implement water resources protection projects.