Study On Ecological Footprint Of Hebei Province

On current international economic research, the study on quantitative measurement of sustainable development is a forefront issue of ecology. The core of sustainable development is effective management of natural capital. For the view of ecological economics, it means that if the development of human society wants to achieve strong sustainability, it is necessary to maintain their stock of natural assets. Therefore, it has significant sense to measure the gap between the ecological services of natural human needs and natural ecosystem services. The model of ecological footprint originated by Rees, a Canadian ecological economist, in 1992 and improved by his student Wackernagel in 1996 meets this demand well. By measuring the energy and resource consumption of a specific area and uniting measures of these consumer that is changed into the provision of such material flow required by the various types of bio-productive land area, ecological footprint is compared to regional biological production provided. The model can determine whether a quantitative development of the region is in the framework of sustainable development. The traditional model of ecological footprint is based on the average yield of global biological production of various types of land, it can not reflect the true ecological footprint and ecological capacity. However, it is a useful tool to compare the ecological footprint and ecological capacity among national and inter-regional area. So this paper used both local production and the global average to deal with data.Hebei Province surrounds Beijing, the capital city of China, in which its sustainable development and ecological and environmental conditions directly affect the ecological security of Beijing. In this paper, by using the relevant ecomomically statistical data from 1997 to 2007 of Hebei Province, the ecologocal footprints and ecological capacity were measured. The results showed that the ecological environment of Hebei Province was very fragile. Especially in 2006, ecological deficit of Hebei Province was twice the national average, the consumed resources of Hebei Province were more than four times the resources their own ecosystems can provide. Two methods had shown that the arable land resource was the major component of the natural ecological capacity of Hebei Province. Because the proportion of arable lands ecological capacity was declining, the actual ecological capacity of Hebei Province was declining slowly. At the same time, the ecological footprint of Hebei Province was increasing year by year. The results showed that changes of the ecological footprint of Hebei Province was closely related to the economic growth, it reflected the rapid development of Hebei Province was mainly based on the consumption of ecological resources. Economic development made people's living standards increase rapidly. At the same time, this approach of the economic development caused a great deal of stress and injury to the ecological environment in Hebei Province. Therefore, to change and control the resource utilization of production and livelihood could reduce resource consumption, and it could be an effective way to ensure socio-economic sustainable development.The distance between ecological footprint and ecological capacity marked the increase in ecological deficit of Hebei Province, which implied the eco-economic system of Hebei Province is in a state of serious overloading and unsustainable development. The condition about eco-economic development of Hebei Province was very serious, ecological deficit of Hebei Province was very high, diversity of ecological footprint was low, and the distribution of ecological space in eco-economic system was not equal. The energy footprint possessed a large proportion in the ecological footprint of Hebei Province with a obvious bias, which implied that the industrial structure of Hebei Province belonged to high energy consumption. All of data showed that the industrial structure of Hebei Province was in a high energy consumption. The current economic development of Hebei Province is still having obvious characteristics of resource-intensive, resource-driven and high energy consumption. This pattern of economic growth will inevitably have effects on the ecological environment.The only way to change current ecological state is to reform its industrial structure in Hebei Province, change the mode of economic development effectively, and to establish a long-term mechanism of energy saving. It can not achieve the goal of sustainable development and its long-term rational use of natural resource untill all things above have been done. Therefore, Hebei Provincial government should draw support based on " big changed in three years," establish the national economic system of intensive use of resourcesas soon as possible, and achieve the transformation of economic development mode from extensive to intensive prosecution, achieve rapid economic growth while maintaining the premise of the comprehensive utilization of resources and the sustainable use, improve the quality of the ecological environment of the region, at last, achieve the full range of management changes such as the eventual realization of social, political, economic, science and technology, establish an effective, coordinated and innovative mechanisms for sustainable development, achieve the goal of a stong economic coastal province.