Research On The Ecological Footprint Of China's Trade Sustainability

With the development of science and technology and continuing progress made by human beings, sustainable development is increasingly becoming the definite target pursued by all mankind. Since the 1950s, with the rapid development of industry and trade, environmental issues threaten the survival of human beings;therefore researchers of all over the world have been working hard to pursue sustainable development. The essential element of sustainable development is a kind of strategy and a model of mankind development;the quantitative measurement is the key of the problem. In this study, the ecological footprint indicator that was put forward by Canadian ecological scholars Rees and Wackernagel in 1992 is used to quantify the situation of sustainable development of Chinese trade from a new perspective and using the outcome bringing forward corresponding countermeasures.The ecological footprint indicator is to measure the human impact on the earth and judge whether the human load stays within global capacity. It provides a concise frame to estimate the natural resources of an area, a country or the whole world. Based on ecological deficit or ecological surplus, we can judge whether the area is able to develop sustainable. Compared with other methods, the ecological footprint indicator uses ecologically productive land rather than money, which is easily understood and used to count.As we all know, Chinese ecological environment is very fragile, and the backward development pattern made the environment worse with the economical development. In recent years, a series of policies have been taken to implement the sustainable development and improve the structure of trade and production. As a result, the situation has changed greatly. By studying the data from the year of 1994 to 2004, a conclusion can be drawn that the present development of trade is sustainable except from several years. Based on the rapid development of the whole world, we should pay more attention to the restraint of our economic development, not only expand the quantity of trade, but also improve the quality of trade. We should reduce the threat to the environment by optimizing the structure of trade and develop the high-tech industries, which use less natural resource.Though the method of ecological footprint indicator that uses ecological physical quantity as guideline is not quite perfect, it is helpful to widen people's thought, further study the problems of sustainable development. Due to limit of data and the imperfect model, there are some errors in the results inevitably. But on the whole, this study has some application value about establishing policy.