| Cities are the fruits of technological, economic and social development and, at the same time, the focus of environmental pollution and ecological damages. Ecological and environmental problems have become the main obstacle and challenge of sustainable development faced by cities. To achieve the goal of sustainable city development, the environmental pressure caused by the consumption of various resources and the discharge of various wastes and the environmental carrying capacity must be measured and monitored. Then, effective policies and measures can be devised based on such measurement and monitoring to guide the city development onto a path of reduced resource demand and environmental pressure. This is an unavoidable approach to a sustainable future of city development.Based on ecological footprint and material flow analysis methods and indicators, a model has been formulated in this dissertation to measure the aggregate environmental pressure of a regional economy, and improvements have been made on the ecological footprint both in indicators and their calculation.In the new system of indicators, distinctions and definitions are made between direct ecological footprint and carbon footprint, and between direct carrying capacity and carbon carrying capacity. This establishes the objective relationship between the pressure and the carrying capacity (e.g. the demand and supply). The comparison between the direct footprint and the direct carrying capacity and the comparison between the carbon footprint and the carbon carrying capacity can better reflect the amount and the nature of overshoot in resource and environmental pressures. New indicators, input footprint, output footprint, and inventory footprint, have also been formulated which correspond to the input side, output side and inventory accumulation of the material metabolism of an economic system. This way, the resource and environmental pressures are related to the material metabolic process of an economic system to reveal the resource and environmental pressures and efficiencies on the input and output sides and in the inventory accumulation of the economic system. For the purpose of environmental planning and management, the input footprint and input efficiency are particularly useful in analyzing "end-of-pipe" measures, while the output footprint and output efficiency are particularly useful in analyzing "start-of-pipe" measures. Furthermore, the basic ecological footprint model can only calculate the footprints of biomass, energy consumption (including embedded energy of imports), and built-up land use, while the improved model can also calculate the footprints of non-energy mineral resource consumptions and their associated hidden flows which makes it possible to present a more comprehensive picture of the resource consumption and environmental pressure of a regional economy. In calculating the footprint of energy consumption, nearly all primary energy types are taken into account, such as coal, oil, natural gas, coke, gasoline, diesel, and kerosene. The ecological footprint of each of the primary energy types is calculated based on its carbon-emission coefficient, making the resulting footprint more realistic. In calculating the carbon carrying capacity, the carbon up-taking capacities of plants (e.g. crop) other than forests are also considered, which can more objectively reflect the total environmental carrying capacity of the region under studyThe new system of indicators is comprehensive:the input and output sides of the social-economic system, resource consumption and environmental pollution, renewable and non-renewable resources, pressure and carrying capacity are all considered. This system of indicators is a creative combination and expansion of material flow and ecological footprint indicators.The new system of indicators was applied to study the resource and environmental pressures and efficiencies of Shenyang from1991to2005. The following can be drawn from the results:(1) The overall resource and environmental efficiencies of the Shenyang’s economic development rose at a relatively high rate during the period, with an annual rate of7.4%. This indicates that the resource consumption and environmental pressure per unit of economic output declined at a relatively high speed, achieving a relative decoupling between economic development and environmental pressure. Especially with respect to resource efficiency, the direct resource efficiency increased at an annual rate of10.7%, which is almost the same growth rate as the GDP (12.4%) during the same period. This is a great achievement for Shenyang during its development stage of high-speed industrialization(2) Regarding the composition of the environmental pressure, CO2emission and waste output have become the main problem facing the sustainable development of Shenyang’s economy. Carbon footprint took up more than2/3of the total footprint and the share of output footprint was over60%. Both these shares rose at a high rate after2000, reaching 80%and70%, respectively, in2005. Because the carbon footprint includes the footprint of the embedded energy on the input side, it is higher than the output footprint. Both carbon efficiency and output efficiency saw no improvement after2000, even, slightly declined, which resulted in a high annual increase rate of15%in the absolute values of carbon footprint and output footprint, surpassing the GDP growth rate (13.76%) for the same period. The lion share of both carbon footprint and output footprint is from CO2emission of fossil fuel comsumption. This indicates that, from2000to2005, Shenyang’s economy was typically carbon-intensive, and CO2emission and waste disposal have become the main problem facing the sustainable development of Shenyang’s economy.(3) The resources within the boundaries of Shenyang cannot meet its need for its economic development, with severe resource and environmental overshoot. With respect to direct resource demand and supply, the direct intensity of load in2005was nearly1.5, meaning that the resource demand to support its social-economic development was nearly50%higher than its own resource supply. Therefore, outside resources are critical to Shenyang’s economy. The carbon load intensity was much higher, reaching3.84in2005, meaning that the amount of carbon emission was nearly4times the carbon up-taking capacity the city possessed.(4) The resource and environmental pressure can be divided into three stages:from1991to1996, the resource and environmental pressure exhibited a slow rise; a short trough appeared around1997when the economic crisis took place in South Eastern Asia; and it rose rapidly after2000as the economic growth accelerated. Attention should be paid to the stage after2000. The rapid growth in resource and environmental pressure and the no-improvement in carbon efficiency indicates pronounced problems in the industrial structure, foretelling a vary hard future task in structural reforms to turn the economy onto a low-carbon and low waste discharge path as called for by the central government.Suggestions are also proposed in this dissertation with respect to reducing carbon emission and raising resource efficiency which are particularly important to the sustainable development of Shenyang’s economy. |
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