Dynamic evaluation of sustainable development in Jiangxi Province

Appraisal of sustainable regional development has attracted much attention in recent years. Conventional appraisal of sustainable development is routinely based on representative overall index system. The principal weakness of this approach is the large number of appraisal factors. The index weight also needs artificial evaluation and subjective factors may drastically affect the overall results. Furthermore, the evaluation indicators and division rank standard are often too difficult to unify. The overall results are therefore not often commensurate to the individual components in space and time. Recently, an ecology trail theory is proposed for appraising sustainable regional development. However, this method merely relies on ecological deficits (which are insufficiently available) in judging the sustainability of development conditions. Using ecological footprint theory, this paper advanced a sustainable development evaluation model that was designed on ecological tension (ETI), occupancy (EOI) and economic coordination (EECI) indices. ETI is the ratio of per-capita regional ecological footprint of renewable resource to ecological carrying capacity. This represents the degree of tension that can safely be absorbed by a regional ecological environment. EOI is the ratio of a per-capita regional ecological footprint to per capita global ecological footprint. It reflects the degrees of both national/regional socio-economic development and per-capita consumption. EECI is the ratio of EOI to ETI. It depicts the level of coordination between regional ecological environment and regional socio-economic development. The sum of ETI, EOI and EECI is a standardized measure of sustainable development index of a region. This paper dynamically evaluated ecological safety, people’s consumption level, and ecological/ economic development in Jiangxi Province for the period 1990~2007. The results showed an enhancement in ETI from 1.56 in 1990 to 1.96 in 2007. About 25.64% of this enhancement occurred during the period of research. This implied that the ecology was in an unsafe state (2 grade). The increase in EOI from 0.79 in 1990 to 0.88 in 2007 also implied a very poor state of occupancy (2 grade). The decrease in EECI from 0.50 in 1990 to 0.45 in 2007 suggested a bad state of coordination (1 grade). Sustainable development index (SDI) decreased from 0.19 in 1990 to 0.13 in 2007, suggesting a bad state ecological sustainability (1 grade).