Assessing Progress Towards Sustainable Development Based On SDGs In Coastal Zone Of Jiangsu Province

Sustainable development has been the theme of the times.With the merge of the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs),sustainable development has entered a new phase.Sustainability Science also calls on the public to increase their attention to coupled land-ocean systems.As a typical ecological environment fragile area in the earth system,coastal zone is the best perspective window for studying the coupled land-ocean or human-ocean systems.It has become a critical issue in Coastal Science and sustainable development research that how to accurately assess coastal sustainability,and how to scientifically seek the optimal path for coastal sustainable development.At the same time,under the general tone of Ecological Protection and Green Development,the contradiction between resource utilization and sustainable development has been prominent.Thus,whether coastal zone is health has aroused great attention from scientific researchers and policy makers.On the basis of comprehensively researching on the evolution of sustainable development and accurately grasping the research hotspots of SDGs,this paper identifies research gap in sustainable development assessment,and systematically proposes a methodological framework—the Coastal Sustainable Development Index(CSDI)of Jiangsu province based on SDGs.This methodological framework improves theory of indicator selection and measurement of indicator calculation and introduces the reference point.Simultaneously,based on the CSDI,the paper conducts a spatio-temporal dynamic sustainable development assessment of coupled human-ocean system in Jiangsu province from 2000 to 2015.The research finds out the short plate of sustainable development,grasps the trend of the sustainable development,explores the trade-offs and synergies between single indices,mines the potential correlation between different parameters,and puts forward targeted policy recommendations.The main research contents and conclusions of the paper are as follows:(1)Based on the localized SDGs,Coastal Sustainable Development Index(CSDI)of Jiangsu province was constructed,which can provide methodological guidance for subsequent evaluation.The process to conduct sustainable development assessment model can be divided into three steps:policy framework localization,conceptual framework formation and quantitative model building.In order to improve the correlation between indicators and targets,this paper proposes to adopt the“down-top”method when selecting ecological environment indicators and the“Indicator-Indicator fact”method when selecting social economic indicators.At the same time,this paper introduces the reference point when quantifying indicators,which effectively avoids the problems related to the standardization of evaluation indicators that differ greatly in units or orders of magnitude.And this paper points out that common methods of reference point setting are functional relationship,time series approaches and spatial reference points(in order of priority).(2)Marine economy has become a new growth pole for economic development in Jiangsu province,but eco-environment problems remain prominent and the contradiction between economic development and eco-environment remains acute.From 2000 to 2015,chlorophyll-a concentration has increased from 3.46 mg/m~3 to 4.03mg/m~3,the amount of clean-up trash per person has increased from 1.19kg to 3.97kg,the area of wetland has decreased from 2595.49 km~2 to 2307.82 km~2,the proportion of natural coastline has decreased from 56.61%to 21.78%,the area of coastal-type or marine-type reserves has decreased from 4561.67 km~2 to 3272.01 km~2.Thus,the current ecological and environmental problems,such as marine debris,eutrophication,wetland reclamation,reduction of natural coastline,and the decreasing number of iconic rare species,are still outstanding.At the same time,gross ocean product of Jiangsu province has increased year by year,with an average annual growth rate of 26.90%.Mariculture yield has gradually replaced marine capture produciton,as the main source of seafood production.However,there is still much room for improving employment opportunities and wages that marine industries provide,especially in Lianyungang city.And the innovation capacity of marine technology still needs to be strengthened.(3)Assessment of progress towards sustainable development in Jiangsu province shows that the overall development has been sustainable in the past 15 years,but the trend has gradually slowed down.Meanwhile,it should be highly valued that the phenomenon of unsustainable development has frequently occurred in the past 5 years.From 2000 to 2015,the scores of CSDI are 43 points,45points,60 points,and 60 points,respectively.The overall score shows a positive growth,about+1.16 points per year.From a spatial perspective,Guanyun county in Lianyungang(52 points)and Haimen city in Nantong(55 points)have the lowest scores and the slowest growth rate,which should be focused on.From the perspective of Index,the socio-economic indices changes positively,while the eco-environment indices mostly changes negatively.The score of Fishery Subsidies(mean=14),Disaster Protection(mean=37),Clean Water(mean=38)is lower than other indices.It is the shortcoming of the current sustainable development,and it is necessary to pay much more attention to the health of these indices.(4)It is difficult to continuously improve the sustainable development of the coupled huamn-ocean system in Jiangsu province by simply relying on economic growth.In the future,annual assessment should be encouraged and a three-dimensional data observation system should be established in order to realize SDGs.The results show that:There is the inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship between CSDI and GDP(R~2=0.801,p<0.01).Thus,the role of economic growth in promoting sustainable development has reached the bottleneck,and the implementation of environmental protection is the core measure to achieve sustainable development in the future.The CSDI is significantly positively correlated with the change of scores,and counties with higher scores tended to have improved over time(i.e.the good get better).Therefore,the shortcomings of sustainable development may be an important obstacle restricting the improvement of sustainable development,which needs to be focused on.There is a correlation between Index scores in different years,and the prediction based on the scores of recent years is better than that of previous years,so the existing evaluation results can be used as an ideal indicator to predict the future sustainable development status.73%of index pairs exhibit a synergistic relationship,and the mutual relationship between index pairs is not easily monitored by a long-term sustainable development assessment,which further demonstrates the necessity of assessing the sustainable development annually.A systematic thinking is applied in assessing sustainable development dynamicly and coastal zone provides a perfect introduction to coupled human-ocean systems,breaking the separation of human and ocean.This is a powerful attempt to assess long-term sustainable development progress at the county level and it has enriched the case studies at the provincial or sub-provincial scales,which can prioritize scientific research in the future.Sustainable development assessment is not only a discussion of the uncertainty of current resource utilization,but also an effective assessment of coastal and marine management policies.The index is a powerful tool to guide the other assessment,improve key policies and raise public awareness or participation.