中国能源生态足迹与能源生态补偿的测度

本文从探求中国能源可持续消费出发,运用生态足迹模型,重点将中国29个行政区域化石能源消费的生态足迹进行了测度,并且进行了横向对比,生态赤字大小的顺序为东部〉中部〉西部。同时,以生态系统服务和生态足迹的理论和方法为基础,从国家宏观层面建立生态补偿的判定标准、量化模型。在此基础上以中国各省份为例,研究中国区域之间的生态补偿量化问题,建立这种补偿的理论基础并尝试确定补偿的标准。结果显示：有19个省市需要向其他地区支付一定的生态补偿。应支付生态补偿的地区多为东部沿海的经济发达地区。应接受补偿的地区多为较落后的中西部地区。建议国家建立生态补偿基金,协调区域生态服务与生态占用的矛盾。     

预测生态足迹评估可持续发展

利用经验模态分解(EMD)方法分解并提取1961～2001年中国人均生态足迹与生物承载力变化的波动周期,建立具有周期性波动的非线性动力学预测模型,预测未来20年中国人均生态足迹和承载力变化,评估中国未来可持续发展进程中面临的挑战。结果表明:(1)40年来,中国人均生态足迹在波动中不断增加,具有明显的3.5年和8年2个波动周期;中国人均生物承载力在波动中不断减少,具有明显的2.7年、28年和40年3个波动周期。(2)若一切照旧,即未来20年中国人均足迹与承载力保持过去40年的年均变化率不变,则生态足迹会持续上升,2015年将达到1.710gha/cap,2025年达到2.034gha/cap;人均生物承载力持续下降,2015年将达到0.851gha/cap、2025年降到0.806gha/cap;而人均生态赤字进一步拉大,2015年0.859gha/cap、2025年1.228gha/cap,可持续发展形势比较严峻。     

Analysis of the major drivers of the ecological footprint using the STIRPAT model and the PLS method—A case study in Henan Province, China

Taking Henan Province of China as an example, we computed and analyzed the ecological footprint (EF) in 1983–2006. The results showed that the EF in Henan Province quadrupled in the 23 years, but its ecological carrying capacity (EC) was rather low and was in a state of slow decline, indicating that Henan's ecological deficit (ED) had become a remarkable social problem. Therefore, the major drivers of the EF's change were analyzed. According to the simulations with STIRPAT model, the major drivers of Henan's EF were human population (P), GDP per capita (A₁), quadratic term of GDP per capita (A₂), percent of economy excluded in the service sector (Ta₁) and percent of urban population (Tb₁). However, these drivers themselves had strong collinearity, which might produce some uncertain impact to the final results. In order to avoid the impact of collinearity, the method of partial least squares (PLS) was used. The results showed that the major drivers of EF were P, A₁, A₂ and Tb₁. Ta₁ was excluded. Compared with the results by the STIRPAT model, which showed that P is the most dominant driver and the effect of the other drivers could almost be ignored, the results by PLS method were considered as more reasonable and acceptable because the impacts of the A (Affluence) and T (Technology) conditions to the regional EF were still too important to be ignored. In addition, the results acquired by both methods showed that the curvilinear relationship between economic development and ecological impact (EF) or the classical EKC hypothesis didn't exist in Henan Province.     

基于生态足迹的湖南省生态消费水平可持续性评价

可持续性测度的核心是确定人类是否生存于生态系统的承载力范围之内,而生态可持续性评价则是区域可持续发展能力的基准尺度。加拿大生态经济学家Wackernagel和Rees提出并发展的生态足迹方法,就是一种定量测量人类对自然利用程度的新方法。它将人类的消费行为与生态承载力联系起来,评价消费行为的可持续性,以此来判定区域的发展是否处于生态承载能力的范围内。文章通过借鉴这一方法,评估了湖南省2004年的生态承载力和生态消费水平,由此进行区域生态可持续性评价。评价结果表明:湖南省人均生态赤字1.2082hm2,即区域生态消费水平处于不持续状态。在此基础上,提出了促进和改善区域生态可持续性的建议。     

土地利用持续性的生态足迹评价法

本文运用生态足迹模型和灰色预测法,基于生态可持续性评估方法度量人地协调性,探讨土地可持续利用的生态足迹评价法。研究结果表明随着人口增长和经济发展,我国土地利用状况不断变化,1978年开始出现生态赤字,并持续增长,直到1996年开始稍有缓和,但土地利用仍处于非可持续状态。作者认为生态足迹评价法能定量地反映土地利用和经济发展的协调性,引导人类社会积极采取应对措施,促进土地可持续利用。     

Human appropriation of natural capital: A comparison of ecological footprint and water footprint analysis

The water footprint concept introduced in 2002 is an analogue of the ecological footprint concept originating from the 1990s. Whereas the ecological footprint (EF) denotes the bioproductive area (hectares) needed to sustain a population, the water footprint (WF) represents the freshwater volume (cubic metres per year) required. In elaborating the WF concept into a well-defined quantifiable indicator, a number of methodological issues have been addressed, with many similarities to the methodological concerns in EF analysis. The methodology followed in WF studies is in most cases analogous to the methodology taken in EF studies, but deviates at some points. Well-reasoned it has been chosen for instance to specifically take into account the source and production circumstances of products and assess the actual water use involved, thus not taking global averages. As a result one can exactly localise the spatial distribution of a water footprint of a country. With respect to the outcome of the footprint estimates, one can see both similarities and striking differences. Food consumption for instance contributes significantly to both the EF and the WF, but mobility (and associated energy use) is very important only for the EF. From a sustainability perspective, the WF of a country tells another story and thus at times will put particular development strategies in a different perspective. The paper reviews and compares the methodologies in EF and WF studies, compares nation's footprint estimates and suggests how the two concepts can be interpreted in relation to one another. The key conclusion is that the two concepts are to be regarded as complementary in the sustainability debate.     

Ecological footprint accounting in the life cycle assessment of products

We present and discuss ecological footprint (EF) calculations for a large number of products and services consumed in the western economy. Product-specific EFs were calculated from consistent and quality-controlled life cycle information of 2630 products and services, including energy, materials, transport, waste treatment and infrastructural processes. We formed 19 homogeneous product/process subgroups for further analysis, containing in total 1549 processes. Per group, the average contribution of two types of land occupation (direct and energy related) to the total EF was derived. It was found that the ecological footprint of the majority of products is dominated by the consumption of non-renewable energy. Notable exceptions are the EFs of biomass energy, hydro energy, paper and cardboard, and agricultural products with a relatively high contribution of direct land occupation. We also compared the ecological footprint results with the results of a commonly used life cycle impact assessment method, the Ecoindicator 99 (EI). It was found that the majority of the products have an EF/EI ratio of around 30 m²-eq. yr/ecopoint ± a factor of 5. The typical ratio reduces to 25 m² yr/ecopoints by excluding the arbitrary EF for nuclear energy demand. The relatively small variation of this ratio implies that the use of land and use of fossil fuels are important drivers of overall environmental impact. Ecological footprints may therefore serve as a screening indicator for environmental performance. However, our results also show that the usefulness of EF as a stand-alone indicator for environmental impact is limited for product life cycles with relative high mineral consumption and process-specific metal and dust emissions. For these products the EF/EI ratio can substantially deviate from the average value. Finally, we suggest that the ecological footprint product data provided in this paper can be used to improve the footprint estimates of production, import and export of products on a national scale and footprint estimates of various lifestyles.     

US deficit sustainability revisited: a multiple structural change approach

In this article we re-examine the long-run sustainability of US budget deficits, using Bai and Perron's multiple structural change approach. While the deficit would have been weakly sustainable over the full sample (1947:1–2005:3), strong sustainability would appear only between January 1982 and February 1996.     

基于生态足迹模型的沿海城市可持续发展分析——以大连市为例

根据《大连统计年鉴》等相关资料,利用生态足迹模型,对大连市2004—2008年生态足迹进行计算和分析;并计算出大连市这五年的万元GDP生态足迹和社会发展能力指数。利用这些指标分析大连的可持续发展情况,并提出相应的对策。结果表明：大连这五年的平均生态赤字为4.3184hm2,说明大连的区域生态系统正面临过度开发的压力;生态足迹多样性指数五年均低于中国平均水平,意味着大连生态经济系统生态空间分布很不均匀;社会发展能力指数高于中国平均水平和万元GDP生态足迹大体处于减少状态,说明大连在经济社会发展的同时,资源利用率也在不断地提高。     

基于生态足迹的南京市生态安全评估

采用生态足迹、生态压力指数和生态可持续指数评估体系,对南京市生态安全进行了评价。研究表明,南京市1996年、2005年、2006年、2007年均出现生态赤字,生态安全受到胁迫;生态压力指数分别为6.32、13.45、13.95、13.92;生态可持续指数处于＂强不可持续＂。生态安全一直处于极不安全状态,其发展模式处于不可持续状态。造成生态安全危机的主要因素是资源过度消耗、人口数量大和城市扩张导致耕地减少等。     

National Ecological Deficit Accounting of China with Detailed Ecological Footprint

Ecological footprint is a new method to assess sustainable development quantitatively. It translates production into biologically productive areas offering material flows to measure the utilized degree of nature by humankind. At present, China runs ecological deficits because footprints required for consumption are larger than available ones. In the paper, the ecological footprint model is applied to calculate the deficits by resource, environment and import-export accounting. It is clear that the deficits have caused enormous pressure to resource and environment, which would become bigger with more factors of resource and environment being accounted. In the primary production and energy trade, import footprint turned from deficit to surplus after 1996, which benefited the conservation of national resource. But compared with the huge depletion caused by resource and environment, they had small effects on deficits.     

Public debt and social security: Level of formality matters

This paper presents a contribution to the empirical literature concerning the relationship between social security and public debt in emerging economies. In particular, several economic and social shocks, as income inequality, were considered in the analysis. Based on the Brazilian data from 2004 to 2010, and taking into account the effects of shocks on variables which are essential to the public debt and the social security deficit, two sets of GMM models were considered. Furthermore, with the objective of testing the results, a GMM system model was built. The findings confirmed that the social security deficit significantly contributes to an increase in the public debt. Regarding the effects on social security, it was observed that an increase in the level of formality in the economy reduces the deficit. In contrast, a reduction in income inequality, real increase in the minimum wage, and increase in health benefits imply an increase in the social security deficit. Therefore, these variables play a crucial role in the search for an efficient social security management system and cannot be overlooked in ensuring fiscal sustainability.     

Incorporating methane into ecological footprint analysis: A case study of Ireland

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) accounting is important to global ecological footprint analysis. However methane (CH₄), with a global warming potential (GWP) 25 times that of CO₂, should not be neglected as an environmental indicator for informed environmental management. While this is a significant component, the CH₄ associated with imported embodied energy should also be included in national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories. This study proposes an initial method for incorporating methane into ecological footprint analyses and hopes to inform future debate on its inclusion. In order to account for differences in methane intensities from exporting countries, methane intensities for OECD countries were calculated using emission and energy consumption estimates taken directly from National Inventory Reports (NIR), published in conjunction with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). For other countries the methane intensities were estimated using energy balances published by the International Energy Association (IEA) and IPCC default emission factors. In order to estimate embodied organic methane, material imports and exports were translated into units (such as live animals) capable of conversion into methane emissions. A significant increase in Ireland's footprint results from the inclusion of the GWP of methane is included within the footprint calculation.     

基于改进生态足迹模型的耕地可持续利用研究———以怀来县为例

在总结以往生态足迹分析方法的基础上,提出了耕地可持续利用指数(CUSI),为定量评估耕地利用可持续发展状况提供了新的研究思路。以怀来县为例,研究结果表明:(1)1996～2008年间人均耕地生态足迹、生态足迹分别增加了0.0274hm2和0.1404hm2,耕地生态承载力则下降了0.1130hm2,耕地生态赤字增加说明耕地消耗量大于耕地供给量,耕地资源利用处于不可持续状况。耕地利用可持续程度由1996年的弱可持续阶段(0.01)向2008年的中等不可持续阶段(-0.31)发展。(2)通过对怀来县2011～2020年耕地生态足迹和生态承载力预测可知,到2020年该县人均耕地生态足迹、生态承载力分别为0.4821hm2、0.1387hm2,耕地生态赤字将达到0.3434hm2;CUSI为-0.55表明耕地利用处于强不可持续阶段,耕地保护形势不容乐观。     

A cost-benefit analysis for the economic growth in China

Currently, traditional development issues such as income inequality, depletion of natural resources, environmental pollution as well as retardation of infrastructure have occurred in China. In the future, more pressures would be imposed on China by the continuous fast development of industrialization, and with transfer of the world manufacture center to China. Sustainable development, including its economic, environmental and social elements, is a key goal of decisionmakers. This paper develops a methodology on cost benefit analysis of economic growth at macroscopic level to identify issues of China's sustainability. In order to address some important issues on how to make policies to improve the quality of economic growth, the CBA framework developed in this study analyses economic-ecological-social interaction, building three accounts that reflect three dimensions of sustainable development that includes 26 sub-models in all, and finally is integrated into an index as Net Progress Proceeds (NPP). The estimation methods of these submodels, such as cost of environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources and defensive expenditures are described in detail. Based on the framework and methods, this paper examines the costs and benefits of economic growth in three aspects of economy, ecology and society. The results illustrate that NPR of China's economic growth had been negative for a long time and has just became positive since year 2000 but was quite low. Even the best was only 1.6% in 2002 (the worst was − 24.2% in 1982). Based on the comparison between three accounts, we can draw a conclusion that ecological cost is the dominant factor that affects China's NPR. The empirical results show that if no other innovative measures or policies are taken in the future the costs of growth would outweigh its benefits, resulting in un-sustainability. Basically, the long-term economic growth would be unsustainable due to increasing environmental damage and depletion of natural resources. There are a few limitations that we consider need to be improved in our CBA framework and method, nevertheless they have many options that can be explored by policy makers, to make the development path more sustainable.     

Modeling a policy making framework for urban sustainability: Incorporating system dynamics into the Ecological Footprint

The Ecological Footprint (EF) is a powerful tool to advance the science of sustainability. However, the static snapshot of EF accounting is not designed to make projections of future sustainability consequences, which fails to elicit policy implications from a dynamic, temporally explicit perspective. This work attempts to incorporate system dynamics (SD) into EF to develop a dynamic EF forecasting framework, and provide a platform to support policy making for urban sustainability improvement. SD is firstly adopted to model the dynamics and interactions of EF driving forces, and then incorporated into the EF framework by correlating system drivers to EF-related consumption categories, embodied EF is finally calculated using the compound-based method. Based on different policy feasibility and sustainability targets, four policy scenarios are designed to explore future sustainability prospects and formulate integrated policies which would attain that sustainability scenario. The modeling procedure is applied to a case study area to illustrate how it works, and policy making for urban sustainability can hopefully be supported using this developed framework in the near future.     

Modeling a policy making framework for urban sustainability: Incorporating system dynamics into the Ecological Footprint

The Ecological Footprint (EF) is a powerful tool to advance the science of sustainability. However, the static snapshot of EF accounting is not designed to make projections of future sustainability consequences, which fails to elicit policy implications from a dynamic, temporally explicit perspective. This work attempts to incorporate system dynamics (SD) into EF to develop a dynamic EF forecasting framework, and provide a platform to support policy making for urban sustainability improvement. SD is firstly adopted to model the dynamics and interactions of EF driving forces, and then incorporated into the EF framework by correlating system drivers to EF-related consumption categories, embodied EF is finally calculated using the compound-based method. Based on different policy feasibility and sustainability targets, four policy scenarios are designed to explore future sustainability prospects and formulate integrated policies which would attain that sustainability scenario. The modeling procedure is applied to a case study area to illustrate how it works, and policy making for urban sustainability can hopefully be supported using this developed framework in the near future.     

The sustainability of Portuguese fiscal policy from a historical perspective

This paper analyses the sustainability of Portuguese public finances, making use of a long dataset with more than a full century of observations. The use of such a long dataset is appropriate because both the unit root and co-integration tests on which the sustainability testing procedure is based require a long period of data. We find considerable evidence in favor of sustainability for the 1903–2003 period which is not, however, maintained for the more recent 1975–2003 period, as it is characterized by the largest GDP deficit ratios of our sample. This latter period appears to signal a shift to an unsustainable path in Portuguese fiscal policy. Hence, our results suggest that fiscal consolidation efforts must, in fact, be continued in Portugal.Paper presented at the 2004 CESifo-LBI Conference on “Sustainability of Public Debt”, October 22–23 2004, Munich.     

Population and lifestyle trend changes in China: implications for environmental quality

Demographic changes have considerable impacts on a country’s long-term growth trajectory through the savings, consumption and labour market channels. Population changes, including ageing, migration and urbanization, as well as lifestyle shifts may affect growth for fast-growing countries like China. Rural population migrating to cities consumes more energy services and produces larger emissions since urban lifestyles are generally more energy- and carbon-intensive. Household structures also keep changing across the majority of Chinese cities. Migration and urbanization together drive China’s energy consumption, CO₂ emissions upwards and environmental quality downwards if the current trend continues over time. It is, thus, necessary for China to draw useful lessons from experiences in other countries by reconciling population development and environmental changes. This study provides insights into the challenge of environmental sustainability, resulting jointly from population and lifestyle changes in China over the period 1978–2012. The empirical analysis generates empirical findings documenting that population changes and consumption behavioural changes contributed significantly to increased carbon emissions over the last three decades. The modelling results are highly relevant for policymakers who seek to adopt new policies to mitigate lifestyle change-driven environmental challenges that China has to cope with in the foreseeable future.