The Study Of Environmental Planning For The Xinghua Economic Development Zone

Environmental Bearing Capacity (EBC) is one of the key components of sustainable development. It calls for the coordination between development and the environmental bearing capacity, with development being based on environment and natural resources. It should be noted that such activities as development of a region, utilization of resources and transformation of nature by human beings, watch for and remain within the range of capacity that the environment can sustain. EBC refers to the upper threshold with which the environment within a region can sustain the human activities for a particular period of time and under a particular condition. Because EBC is about the limit of scale, intensity, or speed of human activities that the environment can bear, its size can be illustrated by using the direction, speed, scale and other measurements of human activities. However, due to the complexities of social, economical, environmental systems, and the fact that human activities interrelate with each other, there has been no existing, systematic evaluation method to measure a region's EBC, nor has there been an effective quantification method. This paper analyzed the source and intensity of contamination in Xinghua Economic Development Zone (XHEDZ), based on relevant national technical guidelines and regulations on planning and regional environmental assessments, as well as XHEDZ's development goals, scale, planning stages, and the situations of those current and to-be projects in XHEDZ. The paper also forecast the contaminant source, types and amount in XHEDZ, and provided an assessment of the environmental impact of these contaminants. Further, it proposed a number of recommendations, including a contaminant amount control program, equalization approaches, and a series of environmental protection strategies and palliation measures. It is hoped that this paper can promote a more scientific approach to the environmental impact assessment in XHEDZ, and thus providing a policy and decision-making basis for the rationally-distributed functional areas within XHEDZ. We hope that the paper will be contributing to the understanding of the environmental conditions and the environmental problems caused by development in XHEDZ, thereby helping control the total contaminant amount in the Zone, and establish a management system for the Zone's environmental protection. All these should promote the sustainable development in XHEDZ.