Research On Sustainable Development Of Beijing-tianjin-hebei Region Based On Ecological Footprint Method

Sustainable development has become one of the important basic national policies in our country. Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is the largest and the highest level of development of the economic core area in the northern China, and also the important hub and gateway of our country in the international economic exchanges and cooperation. In accordance with the general requirements of China's economic and social development strategy, this region should become an important support area to our country to participate in international competition and the modernization. But the ecological environment of this region is currently facing a grim situation, which has been a yield different level of constraints to regional economic and social development. Therefore, it has important practical significance and long-term strategic significance to assess the sustainable development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.In this paper, the ecological footprint method was used to analyze the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region's ecological footprint variation trend from 1997 to 2006, and make a quantitative evaluation to the sustainable development of this region. Based on this analysis, some policy suggestions to this region's sustainable development can be posed. Though the analysis, we can find that the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region was in the state of ecological deficit from 1997 to 2006, and the ecological deficit was in the ascendant trend. It's mean that the development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region's economic has been limited by the supply of ecological capacity, and it was in the unsustainable development status. From the aspect of the ecological footprint per-capita supply and demand structure, the conflict outstood between demand and supply of fossil energy land and pasture. The deficit of cropland and fishing ground were relatively small in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. In the other hand, the forest and building land have ecological surplus in that years. So, we can see that the shortage of the fossil energy land (forest resource) and pasture will be the greatest constraint to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region's socio-economic development. The prominent factor for the accelerating ecological deficit is the demand of fossil energy for conventional economic development is bigger and bigger. The discharge of carbon dioxide increased and the green house effect improved year by year, but there is not enough land to absorb carbon dioxide and other gases now, so the deficit of fossil fuel land increased obviously. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region should take all useful and applicable measures urgently, including appropriately controlling the population scale, reducing the stress of the population to resources and ecological environment; transforming the consumption patterns, setting up the sustainable consumption patterns; improving the utilizing efficiency of energy, actively exploiting new energy; protecting the land resources, boosting the ecological carrying capacity; developing recycling economy, strengthen the ecological environment construction.