The Research On Sustainable Development In Xinjiang Based On Ecological Footprint

Sustainable development has become one of important basic national policies in our country. Since the West china development drive, remarkable achievements of economic and social development have been acquired in xinjiang. 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 xinjiang.In this paper, the"Ecological Footprint"(EF) model was used to assess the sustainability of social and economic development quantitatively from 1999 to 2006 for xinjiang. The change tendency of ecological footprint and its main influencing factors in xinjiang were analyzed for the last 8 years. Based on this analysis, the ecological footprint and ecological capacity was analysis.During the last 8 years, both the EF and the EC were increased in xinjiang. However, the EF increased much faster than the EC, as a result, the total ecological deficit (DF) was more and more great. To 2006, the total DF reached 4979.45 million global hectares in which is about 104 percent of the total ecological capacity in xinjiang. 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 structure of different type of land is not rational: the conflict outstood between demand and supply of fossil fuel land, before 2003 there was partial pasture ecological remainder, after 2004 woodland change ecological deficit to ecological remainder, only in 1999, 2003, 2006 cropland had ecological remainder, building land always in ecological remainder, ecological deficit of fishing land was small.The tendency of 8 year linear was show that the EF and DF will continue to increase during next years. The sustainable development in xinjiang will face more austere challenges if the conventional development approach is not changed. Therefore, to the long-term development strategies of xinjiang, more attention should be paid to the following issues: 1) to strengthen the protection of farmland, pasture land, woodland; 2) to transit developing pattern and to improve energy using efficiency; 3) to strengthen population control and to improve human ability effectively; 4) to faster the industrialization process, enhance city process; 5) government must consider the ecological footprint.