Abstract
The importance of regions in shaping sustainable economic growth trajectories has been the subject of extensive research in recent years. When sustainable growth has been investigated in developing countries, a particular focus has been on China’s unsustainable development approach, which is characterized by high energy consumption and high pollution. Crucially, most of the research so far has focused on topics concerning ecological environment improvement. However, little is known regarding how the quality of human settlements environment can be accurately measured in terms of the concept of strong sustainability at the regional level. This study investigated human settlement environmental quality across 30 provinces in China from the perspective of strong sustainability and attempts to shed light on its spatial influence factors. Estimates are presented using a projection pursuit method. The results reveal that the quality of human settlement ecological environment declined over the period 2002–2014 with a significant geographical disparity in index performance. The results also suggest an observable spatial effect. The energy structure, energy intensity, and environmental control in a province not only have significantly positive effects on ecological quality of a province itself, but also bring spillover effects on its neighboring provinces. These three factors are also important in determining human settlement ecological quality in China.
Highlights
Human settlement ecological environment refers to the human living environment, which is an inclusive and open space for human life and development, and it is the most precious of human wealth
This concept contains three basic parts: (1) the capacity of self-maintenance and regulation of the ecosystem; (2) the supporting role of carrying media brought by social progress and economic development in the region; (3) the system pressure caused by resource loss and environmental pollution
In order to empirically bridge the gap between human settlement ecological environment (HSEE) and sustainability research, this paper tries to develop a theoretical framework that integrates the perspective of strong sustainability for evaluating HSEE quality at the regional level in China
Summary
Human settlement ecological environment (hereinafter referred to briefly as HSEE) refers to the human living environment, which is an inclusive and open space for human life and development, and it is the most precious of human wealth. We attempt to use the projection pursuit method to evaluate the HSEE quality across regions and provinces in China from the perspective of strong sustainability. According to the key research [8,9], HSEE can be defined as a complex ecosystem with a coordinated development of resources, environment, and society. This concept contains three basic parts: (1) the capacity of self-maintenance and regulation of the ecosystem (i.e., resilience of the ecosystem); (2) the supporting role of carrying media brought by social progress and economic development in the region; (3) the system pressure caused by resource loss and environmental pollution.
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