Research On Sustainable Development Of Tourism In Gannan Prefecture Based On Emergy Analysis

Sustainable development is the eternal topic that human society faces.With the rapid development of tourism industry,it will create huge economic benefits for the society,meanwhile,it will also bring a lot of negative eco-environmental benefits.The sustainable development of tourism has significant importance on the natural complex ecosystems and lives of humans and now become a global demand.The contradiction between eco-environmental protection and tourism development in vulnerable ecological regions is particularly salient.Environmental problems such as soil and water loss,forest degradation and loss of biodiversity have emerged in some ecologically fragile regions,seriously affecting the sustainable development of regional tourism.It is urgent to evaluate the development sustainability of tourism in such areas,which could promote the coordinated development of tourism economy and ecological protection.Taking Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture as the research area,this paper incorporates an emergy analysis and applies indexes such as Eti(tourism emergy income)Ete(tourism energy export)TELR(tourism environment load ratio)TEER(tourism emergy exchange ratio)and TSEI(tourism sustainable emergy index)to evaluate the development sustainability of tourism in Gannan from 2006 to 2015.This research results were concluded based on the survey data,the statistical data and the data from the emergy transformation.This research attempts to enhance the quantitative study on the sustainable development of tourism and provide a scientific underpinning for the comprehensive evaluation and sustainable management of vulnerable ecological regions.The findings are as follows:(1)from 2006–2015,the emergy value increased in tourism input and output per year in Gannan.Emergy for rigid demands,such as the demands for catering services and accommodations are too high.During the study period,the energy value of tourism catering continued to increase.In 2012,the cross-boundary tourists has increased because of improvement of traffic conditions.After that,the emergy rate of catering increased rapidly,and the proportion of catering emergy was higher than accommodation,accounting for the emergy of tourism output the highest proportion.Tourism accommodation energy value showed an upward trend.In 2012,improved traffic conditions increased cross-border tourists,so residential energy growth rate decreased.The tourism traffic constructed slowly,the extent of changes about tourism traffic emergy was small,only accounting for0.6%—5% of the total tourism emergy output.The production and sales of tourism commodities ? industrial chain and the energy consumption of tourism shopping in the study area are immaturity.The change characteristics of tourism landscape emergy are unconspicuous accounting for a lower proportion.Tourists have a high degree of recognition about Gannan landscape ecological service value,but neighboring provinces and cities such as Sichuan or Qinghai weakening the tourists' Landscape recognition value.During this period,the sustainability of the researched area was unstable.From2006–2008,the TSEI declined from 2.49–0.94.A large consumption of nonrenewable resources caused great pressure on the environment,rendering the tourism development in this area unsustainable.From 2008–2015,the TSEI rose to7.85,and the tourism development in this area was changed to a sustainable pattern.However,from 2014–2015,the effective emergy output efficiency was still low,which indicated poor sustainability of tourism system in Gannan.In the next ten years,the sustainable development capacity of tourism in Gannan Prefecture will gradually weaken.The sustainable development capacity will slow down rapidly from 2016 to 2020,until it drops to 0.87 in 2021,and changes from weak unsustainable development to unsustainable development.Thus,in 2020,if Gannan Prefecture does not take corresponding measures to change the existing tourism development model and let it develop freely,the development of tourism industry will continue to deteriorate and even restrict its social and economic development.