Measurement And Analysis Of Changsha's Industrial Ecological Footprint Demands Based On Improvement Model Of Ecological Footprints

Industry is nowadays the most stressful economic sector in natural ecological environment.The research on industrial ecological security is of a very important theoretical significance and an extremely urgent practical significance with increasingly serious ecological crisis in the world and the accelerated development of China's new industrialization and under the background that the Chinese government has solemnly undertaken to strive for the peak value of carbon emissions before and after 2030.The selection of ecological footprint model to study the assessment issues of regional or urban industrial ecological security and measure and analyze the needs of industrial ecological footprints is however the foundational work of evaluating the industrial ecological security,which is academically leading and innovative.Changsha is a capital city with a relatively developed industry in Central China and also the locomotive and core in the "two-oriented society" experimental zone of State-level Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan Urban Agglomeration.It is urgent to study and solve the assessment issues of industrial ecological security encountered in the construction practice of “two-oriented society”.To take this city as the object of evaluating the industrial ecological security has not only objective necessity and realistic possibility,but also certain representativeness.Due to some obvious shortcomings of the traditional ecological footprint model accepted by the academic circles at home and abroad,it is required to make necessary improvement to make up for its shortcomings.Based on the aforesaid background and motivations,the “Measurement and Analysis of Changsha's Industrial Ecological Footprint Demands based on Improvement Model of Ecological Footprints” is chosen as the research topic of this paper.In this paper,the three accounts of trade & inventory,construction land and water resource land are incorporated into the traditional ecological footprint model and the accounting scope of original pollution abatement accounts is expanded at the same time.On this basis,we have designed the industrial ecological footprint model(13 models in all,including basic models and six sub-models of accounting accounts)according to the characteristics of industrial operation.Based on the improved ecological footprint model,we have conducted the quantitative measurement and studies of industrial ecological footprint demand in Changsha City from 2006 through 2010.We have also performed the static/dynamic analysis and the 2011-2020 forecasting analysis to the measurement results,and studied the correlation between the industrial ecological footprint demand and other main influence factors.The research results show that 1)during a five-year period,the demand of industrial ecological footprint in Changsha is very large,accounting for above 50% of the total ecological footprint demand.However,it is less than the natural ecological carrying capacity of the whole city and the industry is in a ecological-secure state as a whole,with a certain space for sustainable development.However,as far as the different types of land are concerned,there are profits and losses for industrial ecological footprint demand and natural ecological carrying capacity of the whole city: the cultivated land,grassland,construction land,water resource land and unused land have all ecological surplus;but the forest land,waters and energy land are all in an ecological deficit state,of which,the ecological deficit of forest land and energy is particularly large.This is closely related to the energy ecological footprint demand,which accounts for 60.92 % of total demand of industrial ecological footprints in Changsha.This is because the pressure of energy ecological footprint demand will mainly be borne by the forest land.2)There is a certain ups and downs of the annual total demand for industrial ecological footprints in five years,but the general trend is rising,with an average annual growth rate of 4.3 %.There are similarities and differences in the change of per capita industrial ecological footprint demand and total ecological footprint demand.The per capita ecological footprint demand of household population increases at an average annual growth rate of 3.6 %,and the per capita ecological footprint demand of scale industries however decreases at an average rate of-6.7 %.3)The results of forecasting analysis show: a.the change trend of various accounts for total demand of industrial ecological footprints is that the ecological footprint demand of other four accounts shows an increasing trend in addition to the pollution abatement account,and the same indicator of the pollution abatement account shows a decline trend;b.the per capita ecological footprint demand of scale industries and the per capita ecological footprint demand of household population for the same period show an opposite change trend in the four accounts(except the pollution abatement account),namely,the former descends,and the latter rises.4)There are six main factors affecting the regional(urban)industrial ecological footprint demand.According to the absolute value of the correlative coefficient between them and the total industrial ecological footprint demand,they are sorted or sequenced as follows: industrial structure X5(Proportion of the added value of the secondary industry),resource utilization efficiency X6,urbanization rate X2,economic growth(GDP)X3,household consumption level X4,and total population X1,of which,the total demand of industrial economic footprint is positively correlated with X1 – X5 and negatively correlated with X6.5)The improved ecological footprint model and its refined industrial ecological footprint model proposed and applied in this paper are proved to be feasible,effective,scientific and reasonable in the measurement and analysis of industrial ecological footprint demands.However,there are still some obvious limitations for the improved model,which are mainly reflected in: a.the lack of a set of scientific,reasonable and simple quantitative calculation methods for industrial ecological carrying capacity,which makes it difficult to accurately calculate the ecological carrying capacity of industrial products,fixed capitals and human capitals;b.the significant increase in balance factors of water resource land,which still needs to further explore how to scientifically and rationally determine this parameter;and c.no scientific and feasible quantitative calculation methods for the ecological footprints of industrial products.These issues must be further studied to ensure the ecological footprint model to be more perfect.Research characteristics and innovations of this paper are mainly reflected in the following aspects: First,the definition,connotation and characteristics of the concept of industrial ecological footprint were specially discussed.Based on the basic model of ecological footprint,the model system of industrial ecological footprint was established in combination with the characteristics of industrial operations,including the basic models and sub-models of six accounts(13 models in all).Several models transplanted and used the achievements of other scholars for reference,but they were adjusted or modified to certain extent in this paper.This relatively complete model system is however my new attempt.Second,three accounts,namely,trade & inventory,construction land and water resources,were added in the improvement of ecological footprint models and meanwhile,the checking range of pollutant ecological footprint was extended in the original account of pollution abatement(SO2 and fume that are not involved in the current statistical year book were included into the checking account)to form a relatively comprehensive checking system including six accounts,namely,biological resources,energy,construction land,trade & inventory adjustment,pollution abatement and water resources.Different from the concept of physical waters used by Wakenagel and William Rees,the concept of ecological footprint of water resources has however used for reference the concept of ecological footprint of water resources proposed by Huang Linnan,et al.(2008)and it is a concept of virtual space area.It is my new exploration to apply this concept and its models to the studies of industrial ecological footprints.Third,the concept of physical space and virtual space of land area was introduced in the calculation of land ecological carrying capacity,which expands the actual ecological carrying capacity;the farmland ecological carrying capacity was calculated using the actual yield method and the land multi-cropping index so that the research results are closer to the actual results.