Regional Sustainability Evaluation Based on Modified Ecological Footprint

Abstract:

The original ecological footprint model was based on counting consumption of resources,and the consumptive ecological footprint and productive ecological footprint were introduced to overcome the deficiency in evaluation of regional sustainability.And then a case study was made of the Suzhou city,the sustainable development status and eco-economic system development capacity from 1993 to 2002 were assessed and analyzed.The results show that the productive ecological deficits per capita are all less than that of the global 0.4 hm2,while the consumptive ecological deficits per capita are more than that of the global.The ecological environment is regional sustainable but unsustainable relative to the world,and the ecology efficiency increases year after year.The ecological footprint diversity indexes remain stable and the eco-economic system sustainable development capacity increase year after year.The effective way of increasing sustainability capacity is to increase ecological footprint diversity.The resized model and measurement method of sustainable development capacity proposed could better evaluate sustainability of a region.

Key words:ecological footprint; sustainability; development capacity; assessment