Research On Environmental Performance Evaluation Of Eco-province And A Case Study In Zhejiang Province

Eco-province is a kind of sustainable development mode in China. Since this concept was proposed by Hainan province in 1999, nearly half of the 31 provinces have taken part in eco-province construction till the end of 2007. After several years, this programme has come into effect in protection and construction of ecosystem and environment. But China still faces great pressure as the environmental problem becomes more and more complicated. Environmental performance evaluation (EPE) is an internal process and management tool designed to provide management with reliable and verifiable information on an ongoing basis to determine whether an organization's environmental performance is meeting the criteria set by management of the organization. EPE can be used as a tool to check and measure the achievement of eco-province construction, find the factors that lead to different performance. Policy makers can get feedback from the evaluation. It's useful for eco-province to improve continuously.This paper reviewed the researches and applications of EPE, summarized the concepts of environmental performance and evaluation methods, and defined the connotation of environmental performance on eco-province based on characteristics and goals of eco-province. After that, a framework, a set of indicators and a series of methods were established. Zhejiang province was used as a case and 11 cities of Zhejiang were evaluated. Following are the conclusions of this paper:1. Environmental performance is the achievement made by organization. It contains three meanings: (1) performance based on actions or results; (2) performance based on goals or history; (3) the visible performance and invisible performance. The environmental performance of eco-province is the measureable result of the eco-province plan, related to the environmental problems, based upon its environmental objective and indicators.2. Evaluation framework, indicators and methods were formed. There were three main steps in environmental performance evaluation: establishing a set of indicators, collecting and processing data and integrated evaluation. 12 indicators were selected based on four environmental targets: environmental health, environmental quality, ecosystem health, resource and energy usage. The methods mainly include proximity-to-target, entropy and radar map.3. The environmental performance rank of 11 cities in Zhejiang Province. Among these cities, Lishui has the best performance, Jiaxing has the worst. In addition, Hangzhou and Jinghua have better performance in ecosystem health. Taizhou, Wenzhou, Hangzhou, Ningbo and Zhoushan have realized environmental goals in energy and resource use. Lishui and Quzhou have better performance in environment quality. Quzhou and Shaoxing have better performance in environmental health.For Zhejiang province, the achievement of drinking water quality, greenbelt coverage, air quality , forest coverage , energy use and water use ranked the high performance. The land and acid rain problem was serious, which should be the focus for local government.