International inequality of environmental pressures: Decomposition and comparative analysis

Natural resource scarcity is no longer merely a remote possibility and governments increasingly seek information about the global distribution of resource use and related environmental pressures. This paper presents an international distributional analysis of natural resource use indicators. These encompass both territorial (national production) and footprint (national consumption) indicators for land-related pressures (human appropriation of net primary production, HANPP, and embodied HANPP), for material use (domestic material extraction and consumption and material footprint), and for carbon emissions (territorial carbon emissions and carbon footprints). Our main question is “What, both from a territorial and a footprint perspective, are the main driving factors of international environmental inequality?”. We show that, for the environmental indicators we studied, inequality tends to be higher for footprint indicators than for territorial ones. The exception is land use intensity (as measured by HANPP), for which geographical drivers mainly determine the distribution pattern. The international distribution of material consumption is mainly a result of economic drivers whereas, for domestic extraction, demographic drivers can explain almost half of the distribution pattern. Finally, carbon emissions are the environmental pressure that shows the highest international inequality because of the larger contribution of economic drivers.     

北京市水果消费的生态足迹距离研究

采用生态足迹距离指标方法体系,对2009年至2012年间北京市水果消费的生态足迹距离进行研究。结果表明4年间:跨区转移的生态承载力质量距离,由2009年的11.5×10~8t km逐年增加到了2012年的17.01×10~8t km,共增加了47.91%;生态足迹距离则相对稳定在886.66 km至1073.55 km之间;人均生态足迹距离,总体上由2009年的4.39×10~4km增加到2012年的5.55×104km,共增加了26.42%。从类别的视角,年均生态足迹距离最大的是香蕉(2072 km),最小的是苹果(476 km);年均跨区转移的生物承载力质量距离,最大的是西瓜(4978×10~8kg km),最小的是香蕉(518×10~8kg km);而4年平均人均生态足迹距离,最大的是西瓜(17.7×10~4km),最小的是香蕉(1.92×10~4km)。快速城市化阶段的北京,对外生态依赖范围也迅速扩大,并高于人口增加的速率。     

宁夏生态足迹影响因子的偏最小二乘回归分析

生态足迹分析方法是一种度量区域生态可持续程度的有效方法,偏最小二乘回归法(PLS)能有效解决多元回归分析中变量的多重相关性问题,具有容易操作,相关分析精度高等特点。以宁夏为研究区域,在计算了宁夏2001—2010年人均生态足迹的基础上,应用偏最小二乘回归分析法,对影响宁夏生态足迹的各因子的重要程度进行了分析。通过变量投影重要性分析、特异点分析和预测分析,证明所得偏最小二乘回归模型具有较好的精度。研究结果为:2001—2010年,宁夏人均生态足迹由1.818103793 hm2上升至2.894958909 hm2,生态赤字由1.28352051 hm2上升至2.42316627 hm2,生态承载力由0.53458328 hm2下降至0.47179264 hm2;全区GDP、城镇居民人均生活消费支出、第二产业产值和第一产业产值是影响宁夏生态足迹的显著因子。     

Deriving sustainability measures using statistical data: A case study from the Eisenwurzen, Austria

Within the past two decades sustainability has become a key term in emphasizing and understanding relationships between economic progress and the protection of the environment. One key difficulty is in the definition of sustainability indicators based on information at different spatial and temporal scales. In this paper we formalize statistical models for the assessment of sustainability impact indicators using a public data source provided by the Austrian government. Our application example is the Eisenwurzen region in Austria, an old and famous mining area within the Alps. The total area covers 5.743 km² and includes 99 municipalities. In our study we define 15 impact indicators covering economic, social and environmental impacts. For each of the impact indicators we develop response functions using the available public data sources. The results suggest that the available data are an important source for deriving sustainable impact indicators within specific regions. The presented approach may serve as diagnostic tool to provide insights into the regional drivers for assessing sustainability indicators.     

重庆市生态足迹与生态承载量研究

以重庆市2001年统计数据为基础,对重庆市2001年生态足迹计算结果表明,该地区人均生态足迹为1.65366 hm²,人均生态承载力为0.280393 hm²,人均生态赤字为1.373173 hm²,与全国平均水平相比,人均生态足迹高0.5335 hm²(增加47.64%),人均生态承载力低0.5196 hm²(下降64.95%),生态赤字是全国平均赤字的3.43倍,表明该地区生态足迹超过了当地生态承载能力,区域经济社会发展处于一种不可持续的发展状态.另外,还分析论述了多种渠道解决生态系统超负荷人口、增加科技财政投入、控制环境污染等减少该地区生态足迹的对策.     

Using RS/GIS for spatiotemporal ecological vulnerability analysis based on DPSIR framework in the Republic of Tatarstan,Russia

The republic of Tatarstan is one of the most growing state in Russia in terms of industrialization and modernization with various natural disasters and intense human activities which brought dramatic changes in the ecological process and then led to serious ecological vulnerability. Therefore this research work proposed an analytical framework based on remote sensing (RS), geographical information system (GIS), and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) for spatiotemporal ecological vulnerability analysis at pixel level from 2010 to 2020 and developed a driver-pressure-state-impact-response (DPSIR) framework based on 23 indicators by the AHP weight method to compute ecological vulnerability index (EVI). Further, EVI was classified into five levels based on natural breaks in ArcGIS software as potential, slight, light, moderate, and heavy levels. All 23 indicators were generated from different remote sensing and socio-economic data, processed through digital image processing techniques in terms of removing errors, projection, standardization, and results were saved in GIS format. Results indicate that from 2010 to 2020, EVI was continuously increased from 0.419 to 0.429, and its changes associated with regional vulnerability events and their impact in the region. The moderate level EVI was covering the highest area in all three years with very few changes and continuously increasing. Results also indicate that higher human-socio-economic activities and pressure on natural resources increased ecological vulnerability. This research work is useful to identify main causes and responsible indicators for ecological vulnerability as well as suitable for real-time EVI mapping, monitoring at any scale and region.     

Impacts of human activity on environment in the high-cold pasturing area: A case of Gannan pasturing area

Identifying the specific forces driving environmental impact is a hot topic in the field of sustainable development in the pasturing area. In the paper, the ecological footprint was taken as the index of environmental impact, and a series of index like population quality, prosperous, using intensity, livelihood tactics are considered as the main human factors. Using the STIRPAT model and temporal series data from 1980 to 2007, the author analyzes the effects of the human driving forces of environmental impact.
The ecological footprint method presents a simple framework for national natural capital accounting, and it has been used as a comprehensive index of human activity impact, which indirectly reflect human activity’s pressure on the environment. Our analyses showed that the ecological footprint increased from 238736.9 to 877716.1 ha and per capital ecological footprint also increased from 0.854 to 1.961 ha/per during 1980–2007 in Gannan pasturing area. However, in the meantime, the ecological footprint intensity was inclined from 25.396 to 3.025 ha/ten thousand yuan.
With a view of dismantling the human driving forces of ecological footprint, the modified IPAT-called STIRPAT has been employed as a common analytic framework. Our analyses showed that population quantity and using intensity was a major driver of ecological footprint, their coefficients were greater than 1.0 in model (1); In addition, promoting the prosperous lever and the primary industry proportion, the impact of environment will be increased, but their coefficients are less than 1.0 in model (1). At the same time, the technological eco-efficiency of sample regions was discussed in details, the range ability of the technological eco-efficiency was wider, and 15 years went beyond the average level, but the other was less than the average level. Another important finding in the empirical study is that there are some evidences of an environmental Kuznets curve for ecological footprint within the range of calculated data. Some potential improvements in some further researches and suggestions to alleviate the environment pressure, and it is put forward in the last section.     

张家口市坝上地区生态足迹初步研究

1　引　　言张家口市坝上地区是我国重要的农牧交错区 .长期以来在农牧交错区 ,由于人类对自然资源的强度利用 ,已经超过了生态系统的承载力 ,生态退化非常严重 .定量地计算农牧交错区生态系统承载力 ,确定其阈值 ,是生态保护和建设急需解决的问题 .加拿大生态经济学家ＷｉｌｌｉａｎＲｅｅｓ等提出的生态足迹的概念以及生态足迹、生态承载力的计算方法[2～ 4 ] ,为这一问题的解决 ,指出了简洁的思路和方法 .国内已介绍和进行区域研究[1,5,6 ] .本文应用该方法 ,以张家口市坝上地区为例 ,研究了农牧交错区的生态承载力阈值和人口容限值 ,提…     

Assessing the impact of ecological and economic factors on land degradation vulnerability through multiway analysis

Land degradation (LD) is a global problem which involves climate, soil, vegetation, economic, and population conditions. In Mediterranean Europe climatic variability and human pressure combine to produce soil sealing, erosion, salinisation, fire risk, and landscape fragmentation, all regarded as important factors to start LD. The aim of this paper is to introduce a time-series evaluation of land vulnerability to degradation based on nine ecological and economic variables. The analysis was carried out over 1970–2000 at the municipality level in Latium (central Italy), a region which has shown increasing land vulnerability in the last years. A multiway data analysis (MDA) was applied in order to explore the relationship among indicators over the study period. Their importance in determining LD vulnerability was estimated through a weighting system based on MDA results. A composite index of land vulnerability (LVI) was obtained as the weighted average of the nine variables transformed into single indicators, according to their relationship with LD. Considerable increases in LVI were observed in dry coastal and lowland municipalities close to Rome, thus indicating that climate aridity, population growth, and land use changes are important determinants of land vulnerability in Latium. LVI was positively correlated to the environmental sensitive area index (ESAI) measured on the same spatial and time scales, thus suggesting that a sound evaluation of land vulnerability is possible through LVI score.     

Piloting a social-ecological index for measuring flood resilience: A composite index approach

Global increases in the magnitude and frequency of flood events have raised concerns that traditional flood management approaches may not be sufficient to deal with future uncertainties. There is a need to move towards approaches that manage the resilience of the system to floods by understanding and managing drivers of vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Here we pilot an approach to measure the resilience of a system to a flood. A method is presented in which indicators are used to measure and map the spatial distribution of the levels of flood resilience across a landscape. Using three flood affected municipalities in South Africa, 24 resilience indicators related to floods and its relevant social, ecological, infrastructural and economic aspects are selected, and integrated into a composite index using a principal components analysis (PCA). A fifth component of institutional resilience is used to explore levels of disaster planning, mitigation and public awareness capacities and where these can be increased. The PCA transformed the 24 variables into four main components, the first of which was strongly correlated with underlying social variables, while the second and third correlated well with economic and ecological variables respectively. Distinct spatial variation of flood resilience was found across the study area, with highest flood resilience in main cities, and lowest in wards located on the periphery of cities often the location of peri-urban informal settlements. The disaggregation of underlying indicators showed wards with lowest flood resilience also had the lowest social, economic and ecological resilience. The flood resilience index was sensitive to the exclusion of all three components highlighting the importance of capturing the multidimensionality of flood resilience. The approach allows for a simple, yet robust index able to include an array of datasets generally available in flood prone areas with potential to disaggregate and trace variables for management and decision making.     

重庆市直辖以来生态足迹的动态测度与分析

生态足迹是近来测度生态可持续发展的一种定量方法。以重庆统计年鉴为主要数据来源,对重庆市1997-2004年的生态足迹进行了时间序列的测度。结果表明,2004年重庆市的人均生态足迹为1.2108hm^2,实际生态承载力为0.4696hm^2,人均生态赤字为0.7412hm^2。从1997-2004年人均生态足迹逐年增加,人均生态承载力逐年减少,导致人均生态赤字逐年增大,对外来资源的依赖性越来越大。利用灰色预测模型进行了预测,2009年人均生态赤字将达到0.8695hm^2,并在此基础上提出了减少生态赤字的一系列措施。     

足迹家族:概念、类型、理论框架与整合模式

足迹研究是当前生态经济学和可持续发展领域的热点与前沿课题。探讨了足迹类指标的内涵,将其定义为一类评估人类资源消费和废弃物排放等活动环境影响的指标;介绍了生态足迹、碳足迹、水足迹、能源足迹、化学足迹、氮足迹和生物多样性足迹7类典型足迹指标的概念与研究进展;在此基础上提出了普适性的足迹家族概念,总结了足迹家族的选择性、开放性、系统性和不确定性特征,并根据足迹类指标的一般运算流程构建了足迹家族的理论框架;基于大量文献成果系统比较了生态足迹、碳足迹和水足迹3类关键足迹的特征差异,提出了在足迹家族层面增强指标兼容性的措施;通过逐一测试各关键足迹与27项环境问题的相关程度,从决策相关性的角度初步探索了该足迹家族的整合模式;展望了未来足迹(家族)研究的重点方向。     

Is my footprint too big? Exploring the ecological footprint concept with high school students

The ecological footprint concept is important in order to evaluate the human impact on the environment and propose sustainable solutions in our life. By calculating ecological footprint, people could analyze the impact of their lifestyle on the natural environment. The purpose of this study is to share an ecological footprint education module for high school students in order to increase their awareness and understanding related to this concept. This module included theoretical and activity parts and was applied to 140 ninth-grade high school students. Through the activity, students could understand the connection between ecological footprint, bio-capacity, and population and explore how our actions influence our ecological footprint and bio-capacity. Teachers could adapt this ecological footprint education module so that their students could understand the connection between human activities and earth systems.     

效率视角下的省域生态文明建设评价研究

在界定生态文明概念的基础上,从省域层面入手,选取25个具有可操作性的评价指标,构建以国土空间优化、资源节约集约利用和生态环境保护为一级指标的生态文明建设评价指标体系,综合运用网络层次分析和集对分析等研究方法,定量研究我国省域生态文明建设绩效;在此基础上,将国土空间优化绩效、资源节约集约利用绩效和生态环境保护绩效作为产出指标,将就业人数、科学技术财政支出、节能环保财政支出作为投入指标,运用数据包络分析法测度各省(市)生态文明建设效率,分析指标投入冗余和产出不足情况,并修正评价绩效。研究表明:(1)规模效率低于0.6的省份共24个,占80%,规模效率不高是制约生态文明建设水平提升的重要障碍;(2)在生态文明建设投入冗余和产出不足方面,数值较高的省(市)在地理分布上具有明显的区域聚集性;(3)领先地区资源节约集约利用绩效平均分高达3.92,落后地区平均分仅为0.84,生态文明建设绩效的差异性在资源节约集约利用方面表现的尤为明显;(4)人口规模偏大、绿色生态空间建设滞后于经济发展、水资源利用效率不高是多数生态强省(市)的薄弱环节。     

追踪物种丧失•聚焦生态超载•共享一个地球——《2006地球生命力报告》解读

世界自然基金会和环球足迹网络等2006年10月在中国北京联合发布《2006地球生命力报告》,用生命地球指数和生态足迹两个主要指标描绘了全球生物多样性的变化状态和人类所面临的环境压力。报告显示:生命地球指数1970～2003年总体下降约三分之一,其中陆栖指数减少约31%、海洋指数减少约27%、淡水指数减少约30%,生物多样性正快速持续地遭到损失;自1961年人类的生态足迹不断增加,1987年转入生态赤字下运行,此后生态超载不断加剧,2003年生态赤字达25.28%;化石燃料足迹增长最快,2003年几乎占到一半,达到48%;阿联酋、美国、加拿大等国家人均足迹最大,阿富汗最小,中国排名69位;北美、欧盟、中东和中亚、亚太区处于生态超载状态,非欧联盟、拉丁美洲和加勒比海地区、非洲处于生态盈余;过去40多年,人均足迹高收入国家增长2倍多,2003年达6.5gha,低收入国家一直在0.8gha以下徘徊,中收入国家也从未超过2.0gha。地球的经济怎样才可能在过度消耗中持续发展?3种预测情景也许会让我们走出生态超载的困境、走向可持续发展,共享"一个地球生活"的美好未来。整篇报告可以概括为4个主题:追踪物种丧失、聚焦生态超载、3种情景预测、一个地球生活。     

中国水生态足迹广度、深度评价及空间格局

运用生态足迹方法对水资源进行流量资本和存量资本区分,测算分析了中国31个省市1997—2014年的水生态足迹广度与深度。结果显示:(1)中国的水生态足迹广度受年际水资源量丰枯影响,总体呈波动趋势;各省市的水生态足迹广度存在着明显差异,南方地区水生态足迹广度普遍大于北方地区;(2)研究期内,中国的水生态足迹深度只有1998年为1,其余年份的水资源流量资本已不能满足人类生产生活的需求,需要消耗水资源存量资本;各省市之间水生态足迹深度相差较大,整体上北方高南方低,其中14个省份18年的平均水生态足迹深度为1,平均水生态足迹深度最高的地区是宁夏的308.12;(3)运用空间自相关方法对31个省市的水生态足迹广度和深度进行分析得出,中国省际水生态足迹广度与深度均存在明显的空间集聚现象。水生态足迹广度H-H集聚地区主要集中在中国南方地区,水生态足迹深度H-H集聚地区主要集中在中国北方地区。通过对全国水生态足迹广度与深度的测度分析为水生态足迹分析提供新的研究方法,同时也为区域水资源可持续利用提供理论依据。     

Estimating the environmental Kuznets curve for ecological footprint at the global level: A spatial econometric approach

The national ecological footprint of both consumption and production are significantly spatially autocorrelated at global level. This violates the assumption of independently distributed errors of most conventional estimation techniques. Using a spatial econometric approach, this paper re-examine the relationship between economic growth and environmental impact for indicator of ecological footprint. The results do not show evidence of inverted U-shape Environmental Kuznets Curve. The domestic ecological footprint of consumption (or production) was obviously influenced by the ecological footprint of consumption (or production), income and biocapacity in neighborhood countries. We also found that the consumption footprint is more sensitive to domestic income, while production footprint is more sensitive to domestic biocapacity, which is often unnoticed in EKC hypothesis analyses that focus exclusively on the consumption-based or production-based indictors.     

合肥市生态足迹时空特征与脱钩效应变化及灰色预测分析

生态足迹与脱钩效应分析是衡量地区可持续发展状态的一种有效工具。以快速城镇化的科教名城合肥市为例,利用生态足迹法和脱钩效应分析对2000—2014年合肥市生态足迹与脱钩状态进行定量研究与动态分析,建立GM(1,1)模型对2015—2020年合肥市生态状况进行预测。结果显示:2000—2014年间,合肥市人均生态足迹与人均生态承载力波动上升且幅度较大,生态赤字波动较小,整体略有上升。从结构上看,化石燃料的生态足迹近年来比重较大。从空间上看,生态足迹与承载力均表现出中心区低,郊区高的特征。在环境压力与经济增长的脱钩关系中,强脱钩与弱脱钩出现的频率分别为:42.9%,28.6%。灰色预测结果表明,2015—2020年合肥市人均生态足迹呈上升趋势,生态足迹与GDP增长呈持续弱脱钩的状态,脱钩指数较小且趋于稳定。研究对优化合肥市产业结构、实行有差别的土地利用方式与国土优化格局,适度控制人口增长具有重要的参考意义。     

生态足迹深度和广度:构建三维模型的新指标

追踪自然资本存量消耗与流量占用是当前可持续发展研究的核心议题.系统阐述了国际上新近提出的生态足迹三维模型的概念与计算方法,重点对足迹深度和足迹广度两个指标进行了探讨,总结了模型的主要优势,并通过引入资本流量占用率和存量流量利用比两个新指标对模型作进一步完善,在此基础上实证分析了1961-2006年的中国生态足迹.结果表明,中国自 1978年步人生态赤字时代以来,足迹深度增长了近2倍,足迹广度减少了11.84％,因自然资本流量不足导致资本存量大幅肖耗已成为社会发展常态.到2006年时,中国需要2.9倍的国土才能持续支撑其资源消费量.研究表明,三维模型分别从时空两方面表征了人类对资本存量的消耗(足迹深度)和对流量的占用(足迹广度),增强了生态足迹在不同区域、不同时期之间的可比性,并在一定程度上克服了经典模型的评估缺陷.最后指出了三维模型今后发展的主要方向.     

Biodiversity indicators for sustainability monitoring at municipality level: An example of implementation in an alpine region

As is laid down in the convention on biodiversity, it is essential to install a sustainability monitoring system with integrated biodiversity indicators on both the regional and local levels. The resulting data derived from such a system would be instrumental in supporting the work of policy- and decision-makers as well as stakeholders. However, the integration of biodiversity indicators on the local level is still uncommon. Our aim was therefore to produce a set of biodiversity indicators that: (1) reflects all requirements for regional sustainability monitoring on the municipality level and (2) enables the derived multifaceted information to be simplified and used to improve the applicability and implementation of the system. To this end, we also aimed to assess the validity of the selected indicators in a case study area. Together with a team of 20 local experts composed of officials, stakeholders and scientists, we selected five common biodiversity indicators: landscape diversity, undissected landscape, hemeroby, naturalness of the riparian area and agricultural intensity. In addition, to describe the quality of an area in terms of the richness of species living in it, we developed two further indicators ‘area weighted mean species richness of vascular plants’ and ‘frequency weighted absolute species richness of vascular plants’. In terms of practical and political implementation, we also defined theory-based desired levels, from which we derived performance rates.The study was carried out in 2004 for each of the 116 municipalities of South Tyrol, an alpine region in northern Italy and data were analysed using a maximum likelihood estimation (spatial lag model). The results clearly showed that the large variance of indicator values mainly arises from anthropogenic activities, and that all indicators are robust to spatial extent, and thus appropriate for multiscale assessment. Further, applying a factor analysis allowed three dimensions to be identified that account for more than 76% of the total variance: (1) naturalness, (2) landscape structure and (3) species diversity. Hence, factor analysis is an objective approach to reduce the number of indicators without loosing too much information. However, it should be borne in mind that for specific ecological questions, the use of single indicators is still inevitable.