The Calculation And Dynamic Analysis Of Ecological Footprint Of Sichuan Province

The measure of sustainable development has always been a key field of sustainable development studying, whose core is whether the human load stay within global carrying capacity or not. The ecological footprint method put forward and improved by William E.Rees, Canadian ecological economist, and Wackernagel Mathis, the former postgraduate since 1996 presents a simple framework for national natural capital accounting. Based on the ecological footprint theory and calculation method, a flow network analysis method was introduced to illuminate the structure of complex ecological economic system, and the relationship among ecological footprint, diversity and development capacity was analyzed. In this paper, the ecological footprint of Sichuan was calculated, dynamically analyzed and compared with the local ecological carrying capacity. Firstly, on the basis of recalling and analyzing the sustainable development studying achievements, it is stated what is the main work and the studying idea of the paper. On the basis of introducing the basic conception and the indicator system of ecological footprint, the ecological footprint analysis method is particularly discussed. In case of 52 countries, the method is appraised. Secondly, the writer analyzes the problems on population, resource, environment and economics of Sichuan province, and calculates ecological footprints of Sichuan province in the period from 1997 to 2001. Finally, according to calculated ecological footprint indexes of Sichuan province for the 5 years above, the writer ultimately used calculation software MATLAB6.0 to build the forecast models of ecological footprint indexes of the province with least squares method, and forecasted the indexes in the future, which is the core and the innovative point in the paper. The results demonstrated that the ecological footprint per capita of Sichuan province increased by 1.3% in the 5 years, the ecological capacity decreased by 4.8%, and the ecological deficit increased by 4%. These forecast models are linear models, which can tell us that the ecological footprint of the province will be 1.451hm2 in 2006, the ecological capacity will be 0.385hm2, and the ecological deficit will be 1.066hm2. Compared with other countries and districts in the world, the ecological footprint of Sichuan province in 2001(1.427hm2) is lower than global average level(2.4hm2), and theecological capacity(0.412hm2) is lower than the global average level(2hm2), too. The ecological deficit is much higher than the global average level(0.4hm2), instead.