Analysis of over-consumption of natural resources and the ecological trade deficit in China based on ecological footprints |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Economics, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana;2. Department of Fundamentals of Economic Analysis, University of Alicante, Sant Vicent del Raspeig, Spain;1. Key Lab on Pollution Ecology and Environmental Engineering, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China;2. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China;3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China;1. Universidade Paulista (UNIP), Programa de Pós-graduação em Engenharia de Produção, Laboratório de Produção e Meio Ambiente, São Paulo, Brazil;2. Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA |
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| Abstract: | China has experienced unprecedented economic development in recent years and is now facing severe challenges caused by the over-consumption of resources and by ecological and environmental degradation. To assess the influence of resource exploitation and ecological trade, we have developed an index of excessive resource consumption based on the concepts of ecological deficit and ecological over-shoot, and we have used the ecological trade deficit to assess the pressure created by the export and import of resources and products. Our analysis indicated that China's consumption footprint surpassed its biocapacity in 1983, leading to an ecological deficit, and the production footprint surpassed its biocapacity in 1986, leading to an ecological over-shoot, as the over-consumption of natural resources grew. By 2010, 3.6 times the current area of bioproductive land was needed to provide sufficient resources to meet the consumption. China has been encouraging the development of exporting enterprises by implementing a series of financial and tax incentives, which have stimulated the economy in the short-term but have gradually increased the ecological trade deficit since 2000. |
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| Keywords: | Ecological footprint Biological capacity Ecological deficit Ecological overshoot Nature resources |
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