Assessment of urban sustainable development using fuzzy comprehensive evaluation

1. Introduction In 1987, World Commission on Environment and Development explained the concept of sustainable development for the first time in the report Our Com- mon Future, which has reached a wide agreement. “Sustainable development seeks to meet the needs and aspirations of the present without compromis- ing the ability to meet those of the future”. In other words, it refers to the harmonious development of economy, society, resources and environment, which are an inseparable system.…     

Measuring sustainable development — Nation by nation

Sustainable development represents a commitment to advancing human well-being, with the added constraint that this development needs to take place within the ecological limits of the biosphere. Progress in both these dimensions of sustainable development can be assessed: we use the UN Human Development Index (HDI) as an indicator of development and the Ecological Footprint as an indicator of human demand on the biosphere. We argue that an HDI of no less than 0.8 and a per capita Ecological Footprint less than the globally available biocapacity per person represent minimum requirements for sustainable development that is globally replicable. Despite growing global adoption of sustainable development as an explicit policy goal, we find that in the year 2003 only one of the 93 countries surveyed met both of these minimum requirements. We also find an overall trend in high-income countries over the past twenty five years that improvements to HDI come with disproportionately larger increases in Ecological Footprint, showing a movement away from sustainability. Some lower-income countries, however, have achieved higher levels of development without a corresponding increase in per capita demand on ecosystem resources.     

The development rule of man-land relationship and Sustainable development for the artificial oasis in the east of north slopes of Tianshan Mountain

The paper researches on the pattern of man-land relationship of artificial oasis in the east of north Tian-shan Mountain,the development of Qitai artificial oasis and its relationship with envirorvnet.analyzes the facors influencing the change of Qitai artificiul oasis and its relationship with envirorunent,analyzes the factors influencing the change of Qitai artificial oasis and economic growth through grey analysis,and suggests the approaches of sustainable development of Qitai artificial oasis.Research shows that the pattern of artificial oasis and its environment had gone through three phases：the relatively harmonious stage.the unharmonious stage,and the new fragile balance stage.It also shows that the garden and the shelter-forest are useful to the sustainable development of Qitai oasis according to grey analysis.     

我国纺织品贸易可持续发展的路径分析

本文通过对我国纺织品贸易的优、劣势的系统分析，提出我国纺织品贸易要走可持续发展道路就必须将比较优势上升为竞争优势，并就国际市场竞争激烈和我国纺织品贸易可持续发展提出了相关的对策和建议。     

An environmental-economic measure of sustainable development

A central issue in the study of sustainable development is the interplay of growth and sacrifice in a dynamic economy. This paper investigates the relationship among current consumption, sacrifice and sustainability improvement in a general context and in two canonical, stylized economies. We argue that the maximin value of utility measures what is sustainable and provides the limit to growth. Maximin value is interpreted as a dynamic environmental-economic carrying capacity and current utility as an environmental-economic footprint. The time derivative of maximin value is interpreted as net investment in sustainability improvement. It is called durable savings to distinguish it from genuine savings, usually computed with discounted-utilitarian prices.     

Foresight: A major tool in tackling sustainable development

For many decades, the concept of sustainability has been highly successful in public policies and even in the business world.¹ Nowadays, all initiatives must be sustainable and are primarily assessed on that criterion. However, the efforts made to construct specific methods dedicated to building sustainable strategies seem rather weak. Futurists themselves underestimate the relationship between sustainable development and foresight, even if they are talking about sustainable planning.² They remain generally unaware that foresight could be a major tool in tackling sustainability as well as one of the best methods of preparing sustainable strategies and policies.Indeed, one of the biggest problems in sustainability approaches is the simplistic way used to define the concept, for instance, by using only the very first part of the 1987 the Bruntland report Our Common Future and by limiting the fields of activity on sustainability to the three pillars of the OECD model: economy, social questions, environment.At the Copenhagen United Nations Climate Change Conference (December 2009), it seemed forgotten that sustainability is already an old issue in which futurists were heavily involved at the time of the United Nations Stockholm Environment Conference (1972), in the Limits to Growth Report, published by the Club of Rome (1972)³ and in the OECD Interfutures Foresight, spurred on by Jacques Lesourne (1978).⁴Since that time (forty years ago!) researchers and consultants have learned how to deal with the concept of sustainability, how to analyze it as an ultimate aim for society as a whole as well as a complex object that needs to be approached with adequate methods such as systemic analysis.As Christian Stoffaës said, the aim of foresight is sustainable development in a changing world. As a result, the ultimate aim of strategic foresight appears to be clear: it is sustainability. This article highlights that fundamental relationship as we see it today.⁵     

Designing trans-disciplinary research to support policy formulation for sustainable agricultural development

The article shows how existing multidisciplinary studies on sustainable agricultural development can be joined into a trans-disciplinary approach. Three interdisciplinary projects have been combined in a participatory discussion platform, in which researchers from different disciplines (economists, ecologists, social scientist and geographers) were brought together with a variety of stakeholders. The specific application of the developed method on agricultural development in Belgium, has revealed the need for crossing system boundaries within research, articulation of definitions on sustainable development, development of a coherent sustainability labelling policy and increasing the access to nation wide data both for researchers and policy makers.     

Frontiers and sustainable economic development

Exploiting new resource “frontiers,” such as agricultural land and mineral reserves, is a fundamental feature of economic development in poor economies. Yet frontier-based development is symptomatic of a pattern of economy-wide resource exploitation in developing economies that: (a) generates little additional economic rents, and (b) what rents are generated are not being reinvested in other sectors. Such development is inherently unsustainable. The following paper explains this phenomenon, and provides evidence that long-run expansion of agricultural land and oil and natural gas proved reserves across poor economies is associated with lower levels of real income per capita. The paper proposes a frontier expansion hypothesis to explain why the structural economic dependence of these economies on frontier land expansion and resource exploitation is not conducive to sustained long-run growth. The key to sustainable economic development in poor economies will be improving the economic integration between frontier and other sectors of the economy, targeting policies to improved resource management in frontier areas and overcoming problems of corruption and rent-seeking in resource sectors.      

浅谈区域可持续发展的静态评估指标体系构建

可持续发展已经被确定为我国21世纪的国家发展战略,但是,如何将这一崭新的科学发展观转换成可操作的管理模式,进而指导和规范我们的实际行动,仍然需要进行多方面的研究和探讨,其中,在某区域内评价和检测可持续发展的状态和可持续发展的程度是一个关键的问题.故在分析影响区域可持续发展水平诸因素的基础上,构建了区域可持续发展的静态评估指标体系,并对区域可持续发展总水平的综合评估方法作了具体阐述.     

Economic diversity, development capacity and sustainable development of China

China's economic growth over the past several decades has been among the highest in the world. It has been fueled by cheap fossil fuel energy so energy consumption has risen rapidly, but there are signs that negative feedbacks in the form of waste and inefficiency may affect future development. If energy throughput exceeds the capacity of the environment to process the inevitable waste from production then the development may not be sustainable. We calculate economic diversity using an energy flow network analysis method to explore the relationships of development policy, energy use, efficiency and sustainable development. China and its provinces are presented as a case study and the development status of each province in China is presented. China's development policy does not appear to be sustainable over the period 1985–1998 because of unsustainable energy consumption trends and declining economic diversity. An energy consumption tax is proposed for increasing diversity and dealing with increasing energy consumption in China.     

A grey dynamic model for the evaluation of regional sustainable development and its emoirical study

Currently,traditional development issues,such as economic stagnation,as well as new challenges like environmental degradation and globalization,need attention.Sustainable development,including economic,environmental,and social elements,is a main goal of decision-makers.The key to sustainable decision-making is to evaluate and forecast the status quo of sustainable development.Policy makers need a tool based on scientific information to forecast the effects of future actions on sustainability and make policies for sustainable development.This paper analyzes the relation of the economy,environment and social welfare by the grey dynamic model.The proposed method use time series and basic indicators of ecological system,including economic,environmental and social sub-systems.It is applied to Heilongfiang Province and Jiangsu Province.The results have proved different status quo of sustainable development in these two regions,and suggestions are proposed,such as optimization of industrial structure and eco-industrial development.The conclusion is that there is no unique sustainable path,and accordingly,policy makers shouM choose different criteria and strategies to make efficient sustainable decisions for each region.     

A grey dynamic model for the evaluation of regional sustainable development and its empirical study

Currently, traditional development issues, such as economic stagnation, as well as new challenges like environmental degradation and globalization, need attention. Sustainable development, including economic, environmental, and social elements, is a main goal of decision-makers. The key to sustainable decision-making is to evaluate and forecast the status quo of sustainable development. Policy makers need a tool based on scientific information to forecast the effects of future actions on sustainability and make policies for sustainable development. This paper analyzes the relation of the economy, environment and social welfare by the grey dynamic model. The proposed method uses time series and basic indicators of ecological system, including economic, environmental and social sub-systems. It is applied to Heilongjiang Province and Jiangsu Province. The results have proved different status quo of sustainable development in these two regions, and suggestions are proposed, such as optimization of industrial structure and eco-industrial development. The conclusion is that there is no unique sustainable path, and accordingly, policy makers should choose different criteria and strategies to make efficient sustainable decisions for each region.     

A framework for modelling economy-environment-development relationships based on dynamic carrying capacity and sustainable development feedback

A large literature exists that deals with economic issues of development and growth. It includes various approaches that can be classified as formal-theoretical, empirical-statistical and qualitative-verbal. Recently, the issue of sustainable development has been discussed much, which has given rise to some novel views on the relationship between development and environment. Most of these contributions utilize a more or less qualitative approach. A comprehensive inquiry of the relationship between economy, development, growth and environment may include an analytical approach as well. An analytical framework is proposed here for studies of environment-economy-development relationships that separates between economy, development, environment, and value system. A distinction is made between direct and indirect economy-environment interactions. To overcome disadvantages of assumptions of determinism in long term analysis a sustainable development feedback mechanism is proposed. It reflects anticipative behaviour to natural environmental changes in making long term decisions. This can be seen as a specific element of endogenous growth, namely one based on environmental factors. To illustrate the ideas a number of theoretical models are discussed that can be regarded as dynamic formal extensions of the concept of carrying capacity. Different cases include combinations of internal and external feedback mechanisms to an economy. The results demonstrate that in addition to behaviourial patterns that have been obtained by more complex studies other patterns may emerge.This study was supported by the Economic Research Foundation (Ecozoek), which resorts under the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (N.W.O.), project no. 450-230-007.This paper is based on reprocessed material from my Ph.D. dissertation. I am grateful to my thesis supervisors Peter Nijkamp and Hans Opschoor for comments at various stages in the research.     

Initial infrastructure development strategies for the transition to sustainable mobility

Within the Dutch transition policy framework, the transition to hydrogen-based transport is seen as a promising option towards a sustainable transport system. One aspect of such transition processes that is emphasized in transition management is learning about user behaviour and preferences. However, while earlier research on sustainable mobility acknowledges the importance of refuelling infrastructure, the question of how to unroll such an infrastructure and the role of user practices and user behaviour largely remains unanswered. In this paper we present an agent-based model to study the process of development from niche to market for hydrogen vehicles. We thereby focus on the role of users in this process and support our model by empirical data. Within this model the effects of different strategies for hydrogen infrastructure development on hydrogen vehicle fleet penetration are studied. More specifically, diffusion patterns for hydrogen vehicles are created through the interactions of consumers, refuelling stations and technological learning. The main result is that social network effects do influence the technological trajectory of hydrogen vehicles and thus should be taken into account by infrastructure developers and policymakers.     

SEEA-2003: Accounting for sustainable development?

The revised SEEA-2003 elaborates physical and hybrid environmental-economic accounts, details valuation techniques for natural resources, but rejects monetary valuation of environmental degradation as “modeling”. Preference for physical accounting and corresponding loss of systemic coherence (as compared to the SEEA-1993) prevents meeting the proclaimed objective of assessing sustainable development.     

The employment effects of sustainable development policies

This paper argues that it is time for ecological economists to bring the employment impacts of sustainable development policies to the forefront of the research agenda. Important conservation efforts continue to founder because of their perceived employment effects. The paper examines the evidence on the employment impacts of sustainable development policies and argues that maintaining or even increasing employment depends critically on appropriate policy design and attention to the political economy of implementation of policies. The paper concludes that a better understanding of these issues, fair labour market and structural adjustment programs, and especially forward planning to anticipate problem areas, must replace the piecemeal, ‘knee-jerk’ reactions to environmental issues, such as were evident in Australia during the last federal election.     

积极实施"走出去"战略促进对外贸易可持续发展

从我国对外贸易发展面临的问题出发，分析我国“走出去”战略对促进对外贸易的重要作用，提出有效实施“走出去”战略的主要设想。     

对我国服装品牌可持续发展的思考

当今社会是品牌消费的时代，随着生活水平的不断提高，人们对品质的要求也达到了以往从未有过的高度。本文通过对中国服装品牌存在问题的分析，探求适应我国服装品牌可持续发展的有效途径。     

Quantitative analysis on the contribution of industrial structure change to sustainable development： a case study of Fujian Province

Development and sustainability are the core connotation of sustainable development. Sustainability of economic development and the provision capability of resources and environment are two aspects of sustainable development. The former ones are the foundation of the latter ones＇. Industrial structure has a close relationship with sustainable development. The optimization of industrial structure is the important base for the sustainable development of modern economy and also the important ways of the sustainable utilization of resources and environment; The intensive growth effect of industrial structure change has the meaning of sustainable development. This paper reviews and explains the theory on the contribution of indus＇trial structure change to sustainable development, builds the calculation model through introducing the coefficient of industrial structure change, makes an empirical study on the contribution of industrial structure change to sustainable development in Fujian, and puts forward ways and policies of optimizing industrial structure both among industries and inside the industry in the process of industrial structure change.     

Critical natural capital revisited: Ecological resilience and sustainable development

The maintenance of critical natural capital is an important objective of sustainable development. Critical natural capital represents a multidimensional concept, as it mirrors the different frameworks of various scientific disciplines and social groups in valuing nature. This article revisits the concept of critical natural capital and examines its relation to the concept of ecological resilience. I propose that ecological resilience can help a great deal in specifying the ‘ecological criticality’ of specific renewable parts of the natural capital. More specifically, I suggest that the degree of ecological resilience is inversely related to the degree of threat ecosystems are prone to. The concept of ecological resilience may complement other measures, such as integrity or vulnerability, in estimating the degree of threat specific ecosystems are exposed to. The empirical estimates of ecological resilience add a further criterion in order to build a comprehensive and clear conception of critical natural capital.