Study On Sustainable Development Of Mineral Resource-intensive Regions Based On Eco-innovation

This dissertation is a phased achievement of the National Social Science Fund project "Research on the Sustainable Development of Mineral Resource-Intensive Region" provided by Professor Yan Liang.Due to the uneven distribution of the mineral resources, across areas with rich mineral resources there have formed mineral resource-intensive regions, on which mining cities were constructed. Mineral resource-intensive regions, as China’s vital strategic support base of energy and resources, have produced a total of 52.9 billion tons raw coal,5.5 billion tons crude oil, and 5.8 billion tons iron ore. They have made tremendous contributions to the economic growth of our country, and still provide crucial support for the sustainable and healthy development of our national economy.However, the mineral resources are non-renewable and exhaustible. The production of mineral resources causes serious pollution. The economy of such regions relies too heavily on the mining industry. All these factors, together with other issues, such as unfair resources possession and unequal wealth distribution, are dragging down the environmental, economic, and social development of these regions, or even putting some of them under serious survival crisis. Thus, it is extremely necessary and urgent to explore a sustainable way of development that can coordinate the ecological environment, society, and economy of such mineral resource-based intensive regions.Existing literature mainly researches the following aspects of the sustainable development of the mineral resource-intensive regions:sustainable development of the mineral resources industry; sustainable development modes of the mineral resource-intensive regions, and innovative systems of the mineral resource-intensive regions etc. These researches are of significant value for reference and future studies, but nevertheless there are some disadvantages, including for instances, emphasizing the exploitation and utilization of the mineral resources industry but seldom associating regional borders, or sustainable development mechanisms of the resources industry; emphasizing resource perspectives, but ignoring the fact that the regional sustainable development of mineral resource-intensive regions do not just rely on resources; highlighting on the value of innovation and innovative systems, but ignoring the serious pollution caused by mineral resource exploitation, and the fact that innovation may bring no environmental benefits; ignoring the construction of regional innovative capacity, and making few deep analysis on how innovation and innovative systems promote the sustainable development of mineral resource-intensive regions; ignoring the cultivation of regional competitive superiority which may support the sustainable development of these regions.Eco-innovation aims to reduce pollution, ameliorate the environment, economize resources, and brings favorable ecological benefits. It can fundamentally promote the sustainable development of a region and enhance its competitiveness. It is a significant path for a country or a region to obtain long-term competitive advantage. Eco-innovation can primarily avoid jeopardizing the environment, and realize environmental benefits. Eco-innovation systems provide system guarantee for the regional sustainable development, promotes the transformation from mineral industry to non-mineral industry, and realizes the conversion of development mode. Regional eco-innovation capabilities stimulate the formation of regional competitive superiority. In this case, the research on sustainable development of mineral resource-intensive regions based on eco-innovation has great theoretical and practical significance.On the basis of analysis of existing literature and identification of mineral resource-intensive regions, this dissertation constructs a sustainable development system based on eco-innovation for mineral resource-intensive regions by applying the eco-innovation theory, the sustainable development theory, and the innovative system theory etc. It also analyzes the driving factors and operation mechanisms of the system so constructed. This paper, by taking reference from the principles for the construction of index system of sustainable development, further establishes an evaluation model for the sustainable development of mineral resource-intensive regions based on eco-innovation under the guidance of the objective of establishing an evaluation index system for the sustainable development of mineral resource-intensive regions based on eco-innovation. It also defines a early warning threshold according to relevant national and international standards, and conducts an empirical research on evaluation and pre-warning against the present development situation of Pingdingshan, a typical mineral resources-intensive region. This dissertation finally proposes optional paths of sustainable development to mineral resources-intensive regions in accordance with the research results and connotation of eco-innovation.The principal research work and conclusions are as follows:(1) Based on analyzing the current research status of the problem on the development status and available literature of mineral resource-intensive regions, this dissertation researches the sustainable development of mineral resource-intensive regions from the perspective of eco-innovation. Motivated by the idea of ecological innovation, the regional governments benefit ecologically from the policies of compensated use of resources, ecological compensation and tax exemptions. With the changes of the conception of governments, enterprises, residents and non-government, the creative infrastructure construction and capital investments, eco-innovation in the system, organization and advancement in technology is reached. The final purpose is to complement green management by the government. They form the vertical extension of the enterprise chain of mineral resources, improve the efficiency of resource development and use, speed up the development of non-mineral resources, better the quality of the environment, and increase the value of the ecological service function. It is then that the regional long-term competitive advantage and the sustainable development of our natural ecological environment, economy and society will be fulfilled.(2) The sustainable development system of mineral resource-intensive regions is constructed on the basis of eco-innovation. Pursuant to the eco-innovation theory, the sustainable development theory, and the innovative system theory, as well as the connotation of sustainable development for the mineral resource-intensive regions based on eco-innovation, it constructs a sustainable development system for the mineral resource-intensive regions based on eco-innovation. Under such a system, the governments are the entities that construct the innovative ecological environment of the region, the enterprises are the entities that innovate in the green technology, the universities and research institutions are the entities that innovate in know-how, and the intermediate agencies are the entities that provide services to the sustainable development activities. In addition, this dissertation further analyzes the factors that influence the dynamics of the system, such as the external and internal factors of the main entities of the region, and the technological characteristics of eco-innovation. Thereupon, it constructs the operational mechanism of the system, and discusses its internal operation principles.(3) The evaluative index system of the sustainable development of mineral resource-intensive regions is constructed in accordance with the essence of eco-innovation. Based on the theory of eco-innovation, in the light of the sustainable development mode and operational mechanism of mineral resource-intensive regions, and combined with the construction principle of evaluative index systems of sustainable development, the dissertation sorts out thirty-four indexes with innovative potentials and dynamics. These indexes are sorted according to the index-sorting procedures from a qualitative perspective. Three values of ecological service functions are introduced. Three composite indexes are also introduced which are ecological service function values, human development index and whole-factor productivity. These three indexes are the manifestation of the contribution to ecological development by the ability of ecological environment’s sustainable development, the social development level and technological advancement. The integrated weighting method of analytic hierarchy process (subjective weighting method) and entropy weighting method (objective weighting method) is adopted in ascertaining the weight of evaluation index. Level index (LI), sustainability index (SI) and coordination index (CI) is adopted in scaling the sustainable development of mineral resource-intensive regions. The dynamic contingency approach of punitive variable weight is employed in constructing the warning evaluation model of mineral resource-intensive regions. Pre-warning index thresholds are set in accordance with national and international norms and expert experience.(4)The second largest coal city Pingdingshan was selected in conducting an empirical study since it is a typical mineral resource-intensive region. The evaluation index system of sustainable development of mineral resource-intensive regions is based on eco-innovation, the approaches of literature retrieval, on-site inspection and expert interviews. These aspects are used in collecting data which is used in analyzing and pre-warning for the sustainable development of Pingdingshan. As seen from the evaluation and pre-warning results, a series of significant measures are used in protecting and improving the ecological environment by Pingdingshan from 2005 to 2012. As a result, the ecological environment has been effectively protected and improved, and the changes of ecological environment tend to be better. However, the number of research and development personnel in the research institutions of Pingdingshan, and the investment of technological improvement shows that the creative potential fluctuates and does not increase continually. It also shows that this area does not pay enough attention to the construction of creative ability. The result on the economic subsystem is that the proficiency of economic sustainable development has been in a state of warning, the speed of development is slow, the enterprise construction is still based on advantageous resources, the dependence on resources is heavy and the percentage of resources-oriented enterprises is large. Under this condition, the prospect of Pingdingshan’s economic development will be worrying, if active and effective measures are not adopted. But even worse, the economic development of Pingdingshan will be blocked when the price of mineral resources falls, replaceable resources are widely used or mineral resources run out, which will in turn result in unsustainable overall development of Pingdingshan.(5)Method selection is put forward for the sustainable development of mineral resource-intensive regions based on eco-innovation. According to the empirical analysis of Pingdingshan, it shows that:first, the creative ability of regional ecology influences directly the change of regional economic development models. Secondly, sustainable development of mineral resource-intensive regions based on eco-innovation is a systematic concept. The change of some single factor or factors will form the quick development of certain aspects of subsystems, or the short-term quick development of the region. However, if the influence of other factors is neglected, it will result in the imbalance and non-coordination of the three subsystems of the region which will in turn influence the sustainability of the regional development. Therefore, to guarantee the sustainable development of mineral resource-intensive regions, the construction of regional ecological creation has to be strengthened. The means of improving the sustainable development proficiency of mineral resource-intensive regions have to be explored from the overall sustainable development system. In terms of social means, the system construction of eco-innovation has to be strengthened, social security systems have to be established and improved, public infrastructure construction and creative ability construction have to be sped up. In terms of economic means, tax coordination policies have to be improved, enterprise policies of economic transition have to be promoted, and financial policies of regional competitive advantages have to be elevated. In terms of resource means, government regulation and control and mineral resource planning needs to be enhanced, exploration of mineral resources has to be reinforced, technological innovation has to be strengthened, and the compensated system of mineral resources has to be promoted. In terms of environmental means, clearer production has to be executed, an ecological compensation mechanism has to be perfected and ecological improvement has to be intensified.The innovations of this paper are as follows:(1) This dissertation researches the sustainable development of mineral resource-intensive regions from the perspective of eco-innovation. Previous studies on the sustainable development of mineral resource intensive regions paid more attention to the continued development of the functions of the mineral resources industry, industrial restructuring of mining cities, the environmental quality improvement in mineral resource-intensive regions, but ignored the cultivation of the capacity to support the sustainable development. This dissertation, from the perspective of ecological innovation, proposes the cultivation and development of regional eco-innovation capability under the premise of improving the natural environment, so as to form the long-term competitive advantage of a region. The sustainable development of mineral resource-intensive regions thus can be finally achieved. This is a beneficial supplement to the theory of regional sustainable development.(2) This dissertation builds,a sustainable system of mineral resource-intensive regions based on eco-innovation.This dissertation introduces the main entities of the system with respect to construction of eco-innovation environment, green technology innovation, knowledge innovation, and sustainable development services etc. It also analyzes the dynamics factors of the system from three aspects:namely, the external and internal dynamics factors of core entities of the region, and the technological characteristics of eco-innovation. Besides, it studies on the operating mechanism of the system.(3) This thesis establishes a comprehensive evaluation model for the sustainable development of mineral resource-intensive regions based on eco-innovation. With combined use of expert experience and pair-wise comparison methods, this dissertation screens out the evaluation indexes that can reflect the eco-innovation capacity of a region and the sustainable development level of a mineral resource-intensive region from the quantitative aspect in accordance with the objective and principles of constructing index system of sustainable development for mineral resource intensive regions. As for the defects of using subjective or objective weighting method alone when giving evaluation on the sustainable development of mineral resource-intensive regions in the academic circle, this dissertation, with integrated use of linear and non-linear weighting methods, adopts a weighting model combined of subjective and objective weighting evaluation to determine the evaluation index weights, thus constructs an integrated evaluation model for the sustainable development of mineral resource-intensive regions based on eco-innovation.(4) It adopts the punitive variable weight approach in the dynamic early warning evaluation model for the sustainable development of the mineral resource-intensive regions based on eco-innovation. Introduction of punitive variable weight approach in the early warning research of the sustainable development of the mineral resource-intensive regions based on eco-innovation enables dynamic readjustment of the basic weight of the evaluation indexes. This approach effectively solves the defect that the static weight is difficult to reflect the early dynamic warning requirements of regional sustainable development, which is a trial and supplement to the study of early warning of sustainable development.