Spatio-Temporal Dynamic Analysis of Sustainable Development in China Based on the Footprint Family.

Jing Zhao,Caihong Ma,Xiaoyu Wang,Xiangui Zhao

doi:10.3390/ijerph15020246

Abstract

The existing index systems on sustainable evaluation are mostly based on a multi index comprehensive evaluation method. The main disadvantage of this approach is that the selection and assignment of evaluation indexes are greatly influenced by subjective factors, which can result in poor comparability of results. By contrast, the Footprint Family (including ecological footprint, carbon footprint, and water footprint) is not affected by subjective factors. The Footprint Family also covers the basic tenets of sustainable development. This paper proposes use of a sustainable development evaluation index system based on the principle of the Footprint Family, and including the ecological pressure index (EPI), the ecological occupancy index (EOI), the ecological economic coordination index (EECI), the GHG (Greenhouse Gas) emission index (CEI), the water resources stress index (WSI), and the sustainable development index (SDI). Furthermore, a standard for grading the evaluated results based on global benchmarks is formulated. The results of an empirical study in China were the following. The development situation deteriorated from 1990 to 2015. The results showed that the SDI decreased from a medium level (grade 5) to a lower-medium level (grade 4). The results of this empirical study also showed that the method of evaluation can avoid the influence of subjective factors and can be used in the evaluation of sustainable development for various temporal and spatial conditions.

Highlights

Since the industrial revolution in the 18th century, the world population has increased from less than 1 billion to more than 7.1 billion
The analysis in this paper shows that the ecological pressure index (EPI), defined by the ecological footprint (EF) of renewable resources, can be used to reflect more accurately the regional ecological pressure caused by human consumption
An evaluation system of sustainable development based on the Footprint Family has been proposed to analyze the spatio-temporal dynamic variation of EF, carbon footprint (CF), water footprint (WF), and sustainable development in China from 1990 to 2015

Summary

Introduction

Since the industrial revolution in the 18th century, the world population has increased from less than 1 billion to more than 7.1 billion. The industrial revolution promoted the rapid development of society and the global economy, improving greatly peoples’ living standards. A series of global resource and environmental problems have emerged along with considerable social and economic development. Issues such as frequent visibility and haze issues, in cities, as well as climate anomalies, resources exhaustion, and other ecological crises have forced society to revisit the traditional development concept in which economic growth might be a priority if there is a trade-off between environmental sustainability and economic development [1,2,3,4]. The United Nations (UN) and governments around the world all attach great importance to sustainable development.

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion