The Research On Sustainable Development In Guangdong Province Based On Ecological Footprint

Sustainable development has become one of important basic national policies in our country. Since the reform and opening, Remarkable achievements of economic and social development have been acquired in Guangdong province. As a result, it becomes one of the most rapid developing provinces in China. However, this rapid development went with high resource consumption and serious environmental pollution. Therefore, it has important practical and instructional meaning to assess the situation of sustainable development in Guangdong Province.In this paper, the improved "Ecological Footprint"(EF) model was used to assess the sustainability of social and economic development quantitatively from 1978 to 2004 for Guangdong province. The change tendency of ecological footprint and its main influencing factors in Guangdong province were analyzed for the last 26 years. Based on this analysis, the potential changes of the ecological footprint and biological capacity (BC) was predicted for 2005-2010.During the last 26 years, both the EF and the BC were increased in Guangdong province. However, the EF increased much faster than the BC, As a result, the total ecological deficit (DF) was more and more great. To 2004, the total DF reached 95.16 million global hectares in which is about 214 percent of the total biological capacity in Guangdong. That means the total EF was 2.14 times larger than the BC in Guangdong. The conflict between demand from human and supply of environment was extreme obvious, and the sustainable development of regional society faced serious eco-environmental pressure. From the aspect of the EF per-capita supply and demand structure, the conflict outstood between demand and supply of cropland and fossil fuel land. The deficit of pasture and fishing ground were relatively small in Guangdong. There were partial woodland surplus before the year 2000. Though it is balanceable between the demand and supply of building land, the ratio in per capita total EF was much higher, and the structure of different type of land is not rational. The prominent factor for the accelerating ecological deficit is the development ofurbanization and industrialization. During this development, a large number of arable land was occupied, and the biological capacity of cropland was degressive. The demand of fossil fuel for conventional economic development is bigger and bigger. The discharge of carbon dioxide increased and the green house effect improved year by year. The deficit of fossil fuel land increased obviously.The linear regression models were used to predict the EF of Guangdong province, and the results show that the EF and DF will continue to increase during 2005-2010. The sustainable development in Guangdong will face more austere challenges if the conventional development approach is not changed. Therefore, to the long-term development strategies of Guangdong, more attention should be paid to the following issues: 1) to strengthen the protection of farmland, to control the urban land expansion strictly;2) to transit developing pattern and to improve energy using efficiency;3) to control the growth of population and to improve human ability effectively.