Measurement And Analysis Of The Ecological Footprint In The China’s International Trade

Along with rapid economic globalization, the scale of international trade is enlarged. Together with the imports and exports of goods across the nations, massive ecological resources flow transnationally. It is worth measuring and analyzing comprehensively on the situation how the ecological resources flow behind our country’s continued and huge trade surplus. On the basis of traditional ecological footprint model with two accounts, this paper constructs improved emergy-based ecological footprint model with four accounts. Use the improved ecological footprint model to measure and analyze ecological footprint in China’s international trade.This paper follows the frame of "the theoretical review-the theoretical analysis-method construction-the present situation analysis-the empirical analysis-measures" to launch the research.First of all, discussing the background of the topic and reviewing the existing literature on ecological footprint method, this paper uses the ecological footprint method to measure the ecological benefits in China’s foreign trade.Secondly, this paper expounds the theoretical basis of traditional ecological footprint method. Use the global average yield, the coefficient of energy conversion and balanced factors to calculate the exchanged amount of ecological footprint on biological resources and energy in year 1994 to 2009, neglecting the ecological footprint on industrial products and industrial pollution in foreign trade. While improve the traditional ecological footprint method by introducing the emergy theory, which is named as the modified emergy-based ecological footprint model. Use the modified model to calculate the exchanged amount of ecological footprint on the biological resources, energy, industrial products and industrial pollution. Compare the two kinds of ecological footprint method’s calculation results in the aspects of the input ecological footprint, output ecological footprint, net input ecological footprint and areas of different ecological productive lands, concluding that the modified emergy-based ecological footprint model has relative advantages and discussing the reason. Thirdly, based on the result of the modified emergy-based ecological footprint model, analyze the Chinese sustainable development issue by the evaluation of ecological surplus or deficit, ecological footprint structure, the ecological footprint diversity index, ecological footprint strength and net input ecological footprint per ten thousand Yuan GDP.Finally, according to the production function theory, the input of labor, input of capital, technological progress and the proportion of using ecological resources at home and abroad are the four king factors influence the independence degree of Chinese economic development on foreign environment resource. Make an empirical analysis to validate the impact using input ecological footprint per ten thousand Yuan GDP as the explained variable. Based on the results of the above study, the solutions of improving China’s ecological environment are put forward.