Study Of Sustainable Development In Fuling District Of Chongqing Municipality Based On The Ecological Footprint Model

Sustainable development has become one of important basic national policies in our country. Since Chongqing municiipality,Remarkable achievements of economic and social development have been acquired in Fuling district.As a result,it becomes one of the most rapid developing districts in Chongqing.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 Fuling district.According to the regional characteristics of Fuling,the paper discussed the ecological footprint calculation method,then the improved "Ecological Footprint"(EF)model was used to assess the sustainability of social and economic development quantitatively from 1997 to 2006 for Fuling district.The change tendency of ecological footprint and its main influencing factors in Fuling district were analyzed for the last 10 years.Based on this analysis,the potential changes of the ecological footprint and biological capacity(BC)was predicted for 2007-2012.During the last 10 years,both the EF and the BC were increased in Fuling district.However, the EF increased much faster than the BC,As a result,the total ecological deficit(DF)was more and more great.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,second is garden-land.There were partial fishing ground and woodland surplus.The deficit of building-up land was relatively small in Fuling,but its the ratio in per capita total EF was much higher.The prominent factor for the accelerating ecological deficit is the development of urbanization and industrialization.During this development,a large number of arable land was occupied,and the biological deficit of cropland increased year by year.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.Compared to the ecological deficit of Chongqing Municipality,national and global,ecological deficit of Fuling district is smaller relatively during the last 10 years.The linear regression models were used to predict the EF of Fuling district,and the results show that the EF and DF will continue to increase during 2007-2012.The sustainable development in Fuling 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.