The Sustainability Evaluation Of Integrated Urban Area Of Zhengzhou And Kaifeng Based On Emergy Improved Ecological Footprint Model

Abstract:As an important economic development region in central China, integrated urban area of Zhengzhou and Kaifeng faces the environmental pollution and ecological damage issues along with the achievement in economy and society development, especially the proposal of’Central Plains Economic Zone’, which challenges us besides the great opportunity. We have to reexamine the relationship between the social economic development and ecological environment under developing and unlimited developments and achieve the sustainable development of the integrated urban area of Zhengzhou and Kaifeng. The essay combines the ecological footprint theory and the theory of energy, applies them into the quantitative research of the relationship between the ecological environment and social economy in the urban area, finds the factors that have negative influences on the healthy development of ecology-society system by analyzing, offers the suggestions to improve them combining the actual situation of ecological and economical development in the integrated urban area of Zhengzhou and Kaifeng, thus, provides scientific guide for the development in harmony between the ecology and economy of the region.The essay applies the improved ecological footprint analysis based on the energy value theory, establishes the’energy-ecological footprint’ model of the urban area for the first time, makes quantitative researches on the ecological footprint, ecological capacity and ecological deficit from2005to2011of the urban area, submits the overall appraisal of the development of the society-ecology system of the researched region by choosing six important indexes which can better reflect the situation of the development of the society-ecology system. It’s showed that during2005-2011, the integrated urban area of Zhengzhou and Kaifeng faces serious ecological deficit and also has an obvious increase. The most proportion of each component of the ecological footprint of the researched region according to their descending order is:productive land footprint, fossil energy land footprint and structural land footprint. Among them, the last two ones increase so fast in recent years that the imbalance between supply and demand of researched region has deteriorated. There is no obvious change in the ecological capacity during these years. Though the resource utilizing rate of the urban area improves year after year, the quickly development of the local economic brings more stress on nature resource and environment. The development relation between the society economy and the nature zoology should be corresponded in the future.Finally, based on the research and combined with the actual situation, the essay analyzes the negative factors of the regional sustainable development and provides suggestions to control ecological deficit and stimulate the harmonious development of ecology and economy in the integrated urban area of Zhengzhou and Kaifeng.