A comprehensive evaluation of the eco-carrying capacity and green economy in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, China

Abstract

With continuous growth of economy and population in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), pressure of resources and environment is increasing. Therefore, sustainable green development of the GBA has attracted more and more attention from society. What is relationship among economy, resource and environment in the GBA? How to balance and analyze relationship between Green Economy and carrying capacity of resource and environment in the GBA? It is an important scientific question facing sustainable development of the GBA. This paper constructs a comprehensive ECC index system for economy - resources – environment with data from statistics yearbooks, calculates weights of indicators by entropy weight method and Ecological Carrying Capacity by TOPSIS model later using C++ programming language. It also carries out exponential smoothing for ECC prediction by SPSS software and coupling coordination of economy - resources - environment system in this area. The results show that the comprehensive ECC of the GBA has an upward trend from 2000 to 2017. In the next five years, Comprehensive Ecological Carrying Capacity of GBA will continue to increase linearly. In the process of GE development in the GBA, the environmental carrying capacity has steadily increased. There is a negative correlation between resource carrying capacity and GE but a positive correlation between environmental carrying capacity and GE. The coordination of economy - resource - environment system in the GBA has been continuously strengthened, and development of economy is advancing towards direction of high resource carrying capacity and high environmental carrying capacity. From perspective of comprehensive ecological carrying capacity to explore the world’s two kinds of different political and economic system under comparative analysis of the urban Green Economy development. We found that the Macao and nine cities of the GBA are basically stable but Hong Kong is experiencing tortuous growth with dramatic changes. This research would provide theoretical reference for subsequent development direction of GBA and other bay areas. The future research can carry out deep simulation on the economy - resource - environment dynamics system model and formulate specific development plans. Government departments concerned with development of China’s GBA should be committed to reducing pressure on resources, developing new energy and clean energy, while continuing to maintain even increase investment in environmental protection