Study On The Ecological Security Of Jilin Province Based On The Emergy And Ecological Footprint Model

Ecological security generally means that the condition of the ecological environment and resources in a country or a region can continuously meet the need of the social and economic development, which is never or seldom restricted or threatened by the resources and ecological environment. As a prerequisite for the social and economic development, ecological security has become a leading study of the current sustainable development.Jilin province, which is one of the most important bases of heavy industry and commodity grain in our country, has formed a resource-dependent industrial structure and an extensive mode of economic growth for a long time. The contradiction between the environment and the development is becoming increasingly obvious along with the continuous growth of the resource-dependent economy, and thus the ecological security issues have become a key limiting factor in the social and economic development of Jilin province. Thus, Jilin province is chosen as the research region of this thesis, which mainly concerns the condition of the regional ecological security as well as the improvement of the research method. The research objective of this thesis is to have an objective and precise understanding of the present and future condition of the regional ecological security as well as its dynamic changes and to give an early warning against the undesirable condition and put forward some practical measures in hopes of ensuring the regional ecological security and promoting the social-economic sustainable development. The current researches on the ecological security are mainly the assessment of the present condition of the ecological security, whereas the ones consisting of the assessment, prediction and the early warning are relatively rare. Moreover, most assessments are based on the index systems, but there has been no complete and widely adopted index system so far. Owing to the restriction of the data availability and the discrepancy of the researchers'understanding, the indices adopted in the specific researches differ from one another, and it's hard to avoid subjectivity to determine the standard and threshold value of some indices. Thus the index systems established in most researches are not scientific and complete enough to reveal the actual condition of the ecological security. In addition, the differences of the index systems established for various research regions by different researchers may weaken the universality of the assessment method, which leads to difficulty in popularizing the research achievements. Therefore, it is of great necessity to explore an assessment method that can not only be applied to various research regions but also reveal the actual condition of the ecological security.Firstly, a series of improvements of the ecological security research method are present in this thesis. Ecological footprint method, characterized by the comprehensiveness and simplicity, analyzes the space of the natural capital consumption from the angle of the biophysical parameters, compares the consumption of the natural resources and energy resources in a region with its ecological capacity and thus judges whether the development of the region is within its ecological carrying capacity and whether it is secure. The ecological footprint model is gradually being applied to the ecological security research. However, the traditional EF method, whose focus of attention is the producers of the environmental pressure, measures the occupation of the resources by the regional or specific population's consumption. Comparatively, the local EF method, whose focus of attention is the regional environment, measures the pressure of the specific environment and thus is more appropriate to the ecological security research. Ecological footprint can be classified into productive footprint and consumption footprint. As for the local ecological footprint, the biological products calculate the productive footprint, while the energy resources calculate the consumption footprint. The EF model based on the emergy theory calculates the ecological footprint and ecological carrying capacity by converting various energy flows in the eco-economic system to the corresponding biological productive land areas. Compared with the parameters adopted in the traditional EF model, such as world-average productivity, conversion factors and yield factors, the ones adopted in the modified model, including transformities and emergy density, are relatively stable, and thus the calculation results are more reliable. In this thesis, the ecological carrying capacity and ecological footprint of Jilin province are studied in the application of the improved footprint model, in hopes of revealing the actual condition of the regional ecological security.Secondly, the annual ecological carrying capacity and ecological footprint of Jilin province during 1995-2005 are calculated by the emergy & footprint model. Dynamic analysis and assessment of the present condition of the regional ecological security are accomplished by calculating the per capita ecological deficit/surplus, ecological pressure index and ecological footprint diversity index. The calculation results show that (i) there are fluctuating changes in some extent in the per capita ecological carrying capacity of Jilin province while there is a continuous increase in the per capita ecological footprint (ii) the changes of the ecological footprint corresponding to the arable land, the fossil fuel land and the pasture play an important role in the change of the per capita ecological footprint of Jilin province (iii) the arable land footprint and the fossil fuel land footprint increase rapidly (iv) the order of the ecological footprint according to its scale in the major years is as follows: arable landï¹¥fossil fuel landï¹¥pastureï¹¥built-up landï¹¥forestï¹¥water areas. During 1995-2005, Jilin province is incurring an ecological deficit, which shows a sustained rapid increase on the whole. The ecological footprint intensity is relatively strong and the ecological pressure index increases rapidly. The ecological footprint diversity index fluctuates slightly and it has shown a decrease since 2005. The results of the ecological security assessment show that (i) the ecological environment of Jilin province during 1995-2005 is in the slightly insecure condition (ii) the condition of the ecological security in 2004 is the poorest, which is medium insecurity (iii) the condition in 2005 is taking a turn for the better but the ecological environment is still in the insecure condition.Thirdly, the annual ecological carrying capacity and ecological footprint of Jilin province during 2008-2015 are predicted by the weighted grey model and thus the corresponding ecological security indices are calculated so as to make dynamic analysis and assessment of the future condition of the ecological security and give early warnings against the undesirable conditions. The prediction results show that (i) there will be a slight increase in the per capita ecological carrying capacity of Jilin province whereas there will be a rapid large increase in the per capita ecological footprint, which can lead to a sustained increase in the per capita ecological deficit (ii) the increase of the ecological footprint of Jilin province is due to the increase of the arable land footprint, the fossil fuel land footprint and the pasture footprint, of which the increase of the arable land footprint plays the most important role (iii) the arable land footprint and the fossil fuel land footprint increase rapidly (iv) there will be slight changes in the constitution of the ecological footprint. During 2008-2015, the ecological pressure index of Jilin province will have a sustained rapid increase. The increasing speed of the ecological pressure index during 2005-2015 will surpass that in the previous decade. The ecological diversity index will have a slow slight increase. According to the results of the ecological security assessment, the level of the ecological security of Jilin province during 2008-2015 will be obviously lower than that in average yeas. The ecological security level will drop from the 2nd grade (slight insecurity) to the 3rd grade (medium insecurity) and then to the 4th grade (serious insecurity), which shows rapid deterioration of the condition of the ecological security. The early-warning grade of the ecological security of Jilin province in the future years is relatively high. The year 2008 will be in the 2nd grade (medium early-warning) and 2012 will reach the 3rd grade (serious early-warning).Finally, some practical measures are put forward to ensure the regional ecological security: (i) control the increase of the population and enhance the public consciousness of the eco-environmental protection (ii) convert the mode of the economic growth and establish the resource-economical social production and consumption system (iii) optimize the industrial structure and establish economic system of eco-environmental protective benefits (iv) optimize the allocation of the land use structure and allocate and import land-intensive and energy-consuming commodities actively (v) devote major efforts to the ecological restoration and construction and improve the ecological carrying capacity (vi) establish early-warning system of ecological security and enhance the management of the ecological security.In this thesis, a series of the improvements of previous research methods are made on the basis of the ecological security, ecological footprint and emergy theories, and the assessment and prediction as well as early-warning of the ecological security of Jilin provice are carried out, which provides scientific basis for the regional ecological security and sustainable development and is of theoretical and current significance. Owing to the restriction of the data availability, the research on the regional ecological security in this thesis is macroscopic and synthetical, which considers the production and consumption in Jilin province as a whole and compares the ecological carrying capacity and ecological footprint to understand the general condition of the ecological security of Jilin province. With the completion of the statistical data of cities and countries, the subregional research can be achieved on the basis of the macroscopic research. It is of great significance to reveal the conditions of the ecological security of every areas of Jilin province and make lateral comparations in order to determine the key area of the ecological security research of Jilin province and put forward different measures to ensure the ecological security of various areas. It is not only an important thing to ensure the ecological security of Jilin province as well as its subregions, but also a subject that is worth exploring further.