Promoting regional sustainability by eco-province construction in China: A critical assessment

The regional level has been recognized as a good scale for implementing actions towards sustainable development (SD). An important pathway to improve regional sustainability is to locally carry out long-term ecological planning. In order to reduce environmental impacts from fast economic growth, several eastern provinces of China began Ecological Province Construction (EPC) at the end of 1990s. This paper presented a case for analyzing the progress of EPC in China via both qualitative and quantitative methods. We studied Shandong Eco-province Construction (SEPC) and evaluated its outcomes with its pre-set indicators in 2003–2010. A further evaluation with eco-efficiency and de-linking indices was conducted. The results indicated the pre-set indicators could not effectively reflect of the ecological province construction. It was recommended to introduce an evaluated framework combined with eco-efficiency and de-linking indices to indicate ecological planning at the regional scale.     

Eco-efficiency

Goal, Scope and Background The eco-efficiency analysis and portfolio is a powerful decision support tool for various strategic and marketing issues. Since its original academic development, the approach has been refined during the last decade and applied to a multitude of projects. BASF, as possibly the most prominent company using and developing this tool, has applied the eco-efficiency approach to more than 300 projects in the last 7 years. One of the greatest difficulties is to cover both dimensions of eco-efficiency (costs or value added and environmental impact) in a comparable manner. This is particularly a challenge for the eco-efficiency analyses of products. Methods In this publication, an important approach and field of application dealing with product decisions based on the combination of Life Cycle Cost (LCC) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is described in detail. Special emphasis is put on the quantitative assessment of the relation of costs and environmental impacts. In conventional LCA an assessment of environmental impact categories is often made by normalization with inhabitant equivalents. This is necessary to be able to compare the different environmental impact categories, because of each different unit. For the proposed eco-efficiency analysis, the costs of products or processes are also normalized with adapted gross domestic product figures. Results and Discussion The ratio between normalized environmental impact categories and normalized costs (R_E,C) is used for the graphical presentation of the results in an eco-efficiency portfolio. For the interpretation of the results of an eco-efficiency analysis, it is important to distinguish ratios R_E,C which are higher than one from ratios lower than one. In the first case, the environmental impact is higher than the cost impact, while the inverse is true in the second case. This is very important for defining which kind of improvement is needed and defining strategic management decisions. The paper shows a statistical evaluation of the R_E,C factor based on the results of different eco-efficiency analyses made by BASF. For industries based on large material flows (e.g. chemicals, steel, metals, agriculture), the R_E,C factor is typically higher than one. Conclusions and Recommendations This contribution shows that LCC and LCA may be combined in a way that they mirror the concept of eco-efficiency. LCAs that do not consider LCC may be of very limited use for company management. For that very reason, corporations should install a data management system that ensures equal information on both sides of the eco-efficiency coin.     

生态效率方法研究进展与应用

生态效率同时考虑经济效益和环境效益,是将可持续发展的宏观目标融入中观（区域）和微观（企业）的发展规划与管理中的有效工具。回顾了生态效率的概念和发展过程,分析了其内涵和指标体系,探讨了几种典型计算方法与模型,并介绍了国内外在企业、行业和区域3个层次上的应用实践,讨论和提出了进一步开展生态效率研究的焦点问题和未来方向。     

An integrated data envelopment analysis and emergy-based ecological footprint methodology in evaluating sustainable development,a case study of Jiangsu Province,China

Many cities are experiencing rapid urbanization and ecological degradation, which has resulted in unsustainable development. It is essential to conduct a scientifically rigorous method to assess the regional sustainability. Among many indicators, eco-efficiency could be an effective instrument to promote a transformation towards sustainability. This study applied the emergy ecological footprint analysis and data envelopment analysis to evaluate the eco-efficiency using data collected from 1993 to 2012 for Jiangsu Province, China. The results showed that Jiangsu’s emergy ecological footprint and ecological deficit experienced an ascending trend in general during the period 1993–2012, indicating that the regional development of Jiangsu has been moving away from sustainability for a long time. In six types of biologically productive areas, fossil land and arable were the major parts of emergy ecological footprint. Furthermore, the growth of green gross domestic product was only about 52% of the conventional gross domestic product, and the pollutants emission, energy and resources consumption increased yearly as the gross domestic product increased. Finally, the result of the data envelopment analysis model showed that the effective years only accounted for 20% during the 20 years. In the inefficient years, biological resources, energy resources, pollutant emission (wastewater, gas and solid) and labor were overmuch, and the efficiency of fund usage achieved the optimal in Jiangsu Province. Therefore, improving the level of agricultural modernization, increasing the proportion of non-fossil energy, developing renewable energy and reducing pollutant emission are recommended to promote the regional sustainability.     

Emergy and end-point impact assessment of agricultural and food production in the United States: A supply chain-linked Ecologically-based Life Cycle Assessment

The concept of tracing the ecologically-based life cycle impacts of agricultural and food industries (AFIs) has become a topic of interest worldwide due to their critical association with the climate change, water and land footprint, and food security. In this study, an in-depth analysis of ecological resource consumption, atmospheric emissions, land and water footprints of 54 agricultural and food industries in the U.S. were examined extensively. Initially, the supply-chain linked ecological life cycle assessment was performed with Ecologically-based Life Cycle Assessment (Eco-LCA) tool. Then, the results of life cycle inventory were used to assess the mid and end-point impacts by using the ReCiPe approach. Thirdly, ecological performance assessment was performed using well-known metrics, including loading and renewability ratios and eco-efficiency analysis. As a novel comprehensive approach, the integrated framework that consists of the Eco-LCA, ReCiPe and linear programming-based ecological performance assessment is of importance to have an overall understanding about the extent of impacts related to agricultural and food production activities across the U.S. Results indicated that grain farming, dairy food, and animal production-related sectors were found to have the greatest shares in both environmental and ecological impact categories as well as endpoint impacts on human health, ecosystem and resources. In terms of climate change, animal (except poultry) slaughtering, rendering, and processing (ASRP), cattle ranching and farming (CRF), fertilizer manufacturing (FM), grain farming (GF), fluid milk and butter manufacturing (FMBM) were found to be the top five dominant industries in climate change impacts accounting for about 60% share of the total impact.     

基于生态效率的辽宁省循环经济分析

生态效率与循环经济相辅相成。基于区域生态效率评价是考量区域循环经济的重要内容,又基于目前对于循环经济与生态效率结合的实证研究相对较少,因此,以生态效率理论为基础,对我国最早开展循环经济的试点省份——辽宁省的循环经济发展作以综合衡量。通过生态效率度量模型与循环经济度量模型,以辽宁省1990～2008年数据为基础,运用基于熵权的TOPSIS方法,分别计算了19a间辽宁省各年的资源效率、环境效率、生态效率,进而综合评价了辽宁省循环经济发展轨迹。研究表明：在19a间,辽宁省生态效率总体呈现波动上升态势,经历了传统经济发展模式——末端治理模式——循环经济模式的转变;19a间,辽宁省循环经济发展状态总体上处于循环性不断增强的状态,即经济发展的同时,环境压力不断减小。研究证明了辽宁省2002年实行循环经济以来取得了明显成效,对全国尤其是东北地区发展循环经济,走新型工业化道路具有重要的示范意义。     

The economic and environmental efficiency assessment in EU cross-country: Evidence from DEA and quantile regression approach

This article aims to estimate the efficiency of 26 different European Countries over 2001 and 2012 comparing their performance. Data Envelopment Analysis technique is used in a first step to evaluate the performance of each European country. The output-oriented model was used with two specifications (Variable and Constant Returns to Scale) including as inputs labour and capital productivity, the weight of fossil energy and the share of renewable energy in GDP (gross domestic product), being the output GDP per GHG (greenhouse gases) emissions. In a second step, the quantile regression technique was used, to explain different efficiency scores through variables as Environmental Taxes Revenues, Resources Productivity and Domestic Material Consumption. Results indicate that share of renewables and non-renewable energy sources are important to explain differences in emissions. They suggest a significant change in the trend of economic and environmental efficiency in European countries and put forward the high disparities existing among them. Policy recommendations point for the need of higher steps if the goal is to equal countries efficiency scores. Moreover, environmental tax revenue effects are negatively stronger in less efficient countries, whereas also exerting negative influence over those more eco-efficient. Transport taxes affect negatively more eco-efficient countries and positively less eco-efficient countries. Energy taxes only seem to positively influence the lower eco-efficient countries. There is also evidence for a negative premium of efficiency considering domestic materials consumption. Finally, resources productivity shows a positive and significant influence independently of the country technical eco-efficiency level.