Sharing resources: The global distribution of the Ecological Footprint

This paper examines how the human demand on bioproductive lands, as measured by the Ecological Footprint, is distributed across the globe using methods commonly used to measure the distribution of income. Measuring the distribution of natural resource use will be necessary to achieve an economy that is sustainable, just and efficient. Currently, different nations place different demands on the environment, i.e. the Ecological Footprint is not evenly distributed across the globe. Calculation of the Gini coefficient for total Ecological Footprint and its components explains the sources of inequality in overall resource use. Calculation of the Atkinson index shows how inequality in the Ecological Footprint is related to the inequality of income, and environmental intensity.     

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。     

Measuring human development: a stochastic dominance approach

We consider a weighting scheme that yields a best-case scenario for measured human development such as the official equally-weighted Human Development Index (HDI) using an approach that relies on consistent tests for stochastic dominance efficiency. We compare the official equally-weighted HDI to all possible indices constructed from a set of individual components to obtain the most optimistic scenario for development. In the best-case scenario index education is weighted considerably more than the other two components, per capita income and life expectancy, relative to the weight that it gets in the official equally-weighted index. It also turns out that the improvement in the official HDI is mainly driven by improvements over time in the education index, the component moving fastest relative to its targets, when compared with per capita income and life expectancy. We find that the best-case scenario hybrid index leads to a marked improvement of measured development over time when compared with the official equally-weighted HDI.     

基于生态占用模型的甘肃省可持续发展定量评价

生态占用模型是可持续发展定量评价中的一种直观而有效的方法。甘肃省经济比较落后,支柱产业对自然资源的依赖性强,属于资源输出型地区。从消费的角度计算甘肃省的生态占用,难以准确反映其资源利用程度。本文利用生态占用的理论和方法,从生产的角度对甘肃省2005年的生态占用进行计算,并与其生态容量进行比较。结果表明,2005年甘肃省的人均生态占用为2．24hm2,而人均生态容量为1．15hm2,人均生态赤字高达1．11hm2,超载98．58％。这说明甘肃省对自然资源的开发利用程度已大大超过其生态承载力,其发展是不可持续的。     

Allocating ecological footprints to final consumption categories with input–output analysis

We present and discuss a method that allows the disaggregation of national Ecological Footprints by economic sector, detailed final demand category, sub-national area or socio-economic group. This is done by combining existing National Footprint Accounts with input–output analysis. Calculations in the empirical part are carried out by using supply and use tables for the United Kingdom, covering the reporting period 2000. Ecological Footprints are allocated to detailed household consumption activities following the COICOP classification system and to a detailed breakdown of capital investment. The method presented enables the calculation of comparable Ecological Footprints on all sub-national levels and for different socio-economic groups. The novelty of the approach lies in the use of input–output analysis to re-allocate existing Footprint accounts, in the detail of disaggregation by consumption category and in the expanded use of household expenditure data. This extends the potential for applications of the Ecological Footprint concept and helps to inform scenarios, policies and strategies on sustainable consumption. The method described in this paper can be applied to every country for which a National Footprint Account exists and where appropriate economic and environmental accounts are available. The approach helps to save time in data collection and improves the consistency between Ecological Footprint estimates for a particular human society from different researchers. For these reasons, the suggested methodology includes crucial steps on the way towards a standardisation of Ecological Footprint accounts.     

谈人类发展指数的理论评价与应用

人类发展指数(HDI)从人本主义出发,取代传统的片面追求经济增长,单纯比较人均GDP的方法,更加全面科学地为各国的发展实践提供了衡量的标准;同时,可以通过对这个指标体系中各项分指标进行分析比较,发现与别国的差距,以进一步改良政策,使本国的经济和社会都能够更健康地发展,尤其无论从理论上还是指标设计上都可以为我国建设和谐社会和实现经济可持续性发展的目标服务.就人类发展指标体系的创建进行阐述,然后对其包含的发展思想进行理论评价,最后以中国的发展实践中存在的问题进一步证明研究和重视人类发展指数的意义.     

Sustainable Development in Affluent Countries and the Neo-Institutionalist Synthesis

Since development is a process rather than an end-state, all countries are always in a constant state of change, regardless of their level of income. This article focuses on the challenges that affluent countries face today in shifting to a sustainable development path. These challenges include improving the quality of life, achieving environmental sustainability, and addressing inequality. In the United States in particular, these challenges have increased in recent decades, despite significant economic growth. The neoclassical development model assumes that growth makes it easier to achieve sustainable development and that wellbeing rises with per capita income. We question these assumptions, and find a theory of economic development in institutional economics that better explains and accommodates sustainability. We draw on the work of many original institutionalist economists (OIE), and others working in this tradition, to analyze the challenges of sustainable development in affluent countries, especially in the United States.     

A New Approach to Human Development Index

Human development Index (HDI) was introduced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 1990. For the first four years UNDP used the maximum and the minimum values of the data series to standardize the variables. In 1994 the procedure of standardization was modified with the introduction of arbitrary fixed minimum and maximum values for each variable. Both methods have merits and demerits. The present study proposes an alternative measure of estimating HDI which bridges the gap between the methods of computing HDI proposed by the UNDP in 1990 and 1994. This study also incorporates unadjusted per capita real gross domestic product (PCRGDP) instead of adjusted PCRGDP used by the UNDP. The data from the Human Development Report (HDR) 2000 for 174 countries are used to test the robustness of the suggested index and the results are compared to those of the HDI. Also average values for full sample as well as top 20 percent and bottom 20 percent are offered to show the superiority of our method to that of the UNDP's HDI.     

Trading spaces: Calculating embodied Ecological Footprints in international trade using a Product Land Use Matrix (PLUM)

Nations import and export biophysical resources. With many ecosystems worldwide under mounting stress, countries may be increasingly interested in knowing the extent and origin of their ecological imports and dependencies. In this paper the Ecological Footprint is used as a tool to measure the biophysical (as opposed to financial) value of international trade flows. This paper attempts to answer the following question: How large of an Ecological Footprint does a given country exert inside the borders of each of its trading partners? Records in the UN COMTRADE bilateral trade database are multiplied by a matrix of per-product Footprint yield coefficients to translate from values in dollars and tonnes to units of hectares. The results show that the largest interregional flows are from Latin to North America, and from North America to Asia-Pacific. Grouping countries by GDP, high and middle income countries appear in Footprint terms to trade predominantly with other high and middle income countries and much less with low income countries.     

基于生态足迹的从江县可持续发展定量分析

为了更深入地了解可持续发展的程度,有关学者努力探寻能定量衡量国家或地区发展的可持续模型和方法,其中生态足迹就是一个通过相同单位比较人类需求与自然供给的易懂、清晰、直观模型。文章基于生态足迹模型对一个少数民族众多的贫困县进行定量分析,结合一些相关指标,进行地区间横向对比。研究结果表明,2004年从江县的人均生态足迹为1.30007hm^2,人均生态承载力为1.53896hm^2,虽有人均生态盈余＋0.05422hm^2,但根据中国可持续发展等级,从江属弱可持续发展等级。依据分析弱可持续发展的原因提出了可持续发展对策。     

A first empirical comparison of energy Footprints embodied in trade — MRIO versus PLUM

The Ecological Footprint as an indicator that accounts for human demand on global bioproductivity sets out to quantify the impacts associated with consumption in a given country, including the impacts associated with trade. The National Footprint Accounts (NFA) by Global Footprint Network (GFN) calculate trade-embodied Footprints by multiplying yield and embodied energy factors with mass volumes of traded goods in a “Product Land Use Matrix (PLUM)”. This article compares energy Footprints embodied in trade from and to the United Kingdom in 2002 as calculated by the NFA-PLUM with the results from a recently developed multi-region input-output model (MRIO) for the UK. Although totals for imports and exports are comparable, breaking down the results by economic sectors reveals large differences and hardly any correlation between the two methods. The omission of trade in services (especially transport services) and upstream impacts of energy goods (fossil fuels) and the use of inappropriate embodied energy factors in the NFA-PLUM method are identified as the main reasons for these differences.In the light of the results it seems that a comprehensive Footprint account of trade can better be achieved with an input-output based approach. I conclude that MRIO models - once fully developed - will be particularly suitable in the future to estimate the Ecological Footprints of imports and exports of nations with the possibility to track their origin via inter-industry linkages, international supply chains and multi-national trade flows.     

Exploring past and future changes in the ecological footprint for world regions

The Ecological Footprint (EF) has received considerable attention as a useful indicator in the context of sustainable development. So far, it has mostly been applied as a static indicator. Here, we have derived a set of long-term EF scenarios for 17 world regions using the IMAGE 2.2 implementation of the IPCCs SRES scenarios. The scenarios are used to discuss potential trends in EFs in different world regions but also to analyse underlying trends driving changes in the EF. The baseline scenarios show the EF for real land use only (not accounting for CO₂) to increase further in the next few decades in most world regions, being driven by population growth, changes in human diets towards more land-intensive products and overall increases in consumption levels. Future crop yield improvements and technology development will partly offset these trends, resulting in decreasing per capita EFs, but increasing total EFs. In the longer term, EF development may strongly diverge on the basis of assumptions made in the different baseline scenarios (from 5.4 Gha at present to 6.0–8.2 Gha in 2050 depending on the scenario). The aggregated EF following the definition of Wackernagel et al. (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 99 (2002) 9266–9271) (including virtual land for CO₂) increases more strongly, from 12.6 to 20–31 Gha depending on the different scenarios. An alternative scenario was developed to explore whether optimistic assumptions for changes in consumption and production patterns could limit the increase of the global EF, which limited EF increase to 15 Gha in 2050. This scenario still allowed for population growth and strong economic development in low-income regions.     

Endogenous categorization of the human development

The human development index (HDI) is one of the most well-known measures of welfare. We apply clustering techniques to endogenously determine how similar countries are with respect to the HDI, and into how many categories they can be classified. We find that, in contrast to the usual assumption in the United Nations’ Human Development Reports, the number of categories is not fixed and has varied over time, from three in 1990 to four in 2014. We also find that the countries within each category differ from the United Nation’s proposal.     

河北省可持续发展状况的衡量与分析——生态足迹分析法

生态足迹是衡量区域可持续发展状况的一种定量分析方法。文章分析了河北省2003年的生态足迹情况,得出人均生态足迹需求为2.9198ha,人均生态供给仅为0.4298ha,生态赤字高达2.4900ha,河北省的经济发展处于一种不可持续的状态,针对这种状况,提出了一些措施来改善河北省生态经济系统的可持续发展能力。     

Demand in New Zealand hospitals: expect the unexpected?

The health care sector in New Zealand has undergone substantial structural reform since 1983 and stands out relative to other OECD countries, with relatively low per capita health expenditure and a high share of public funding. Efficient allocation of resources in this public dominant health system is therefore paramount. This article uses a national database of hospital admissions to predict hospital demand. We find lagged information on patient demand imperative in formulating an easy to implement approach for predictive purposes. Contrasting predicted with actual demand, we construct an indicator of volatility in unexpected patient demand (at both the hospital and the disease chapter level) and assess its role with regard to patient outcomes. There is consistent evidence that when actual patient numbers exceed predicted, patients stay in hospital significantly longer and are more likely to have an acute readmission.     

Taking the “U” out of Kuznets: A comprehensive analysis of the EKC and environmental degradation

Unlike most Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) studies which focus on narrow measures of pollution as proxies for environmental quality, we test the validity of the EKC using the Ecological Footprint (EF), a more comprehensive measure of environmental degradation. We find no empirical evidence of an EKC relationship between the EF and economic development, and only limited support for such a relationship among the components of the EF. In addition, we discover that energy is largely responsible for the lack of an EKC relationship, and that energy consumption levels would have to be cut by over 50% in order for a statistically significant EKC relationship to emerge from the data. Overall, these results suggest that growth alone will not lead to sustainable development.     

基于生态足迹模型的可持续性度量研究--以吉林省大安市为例

针对吉林省大安市发展现状和存在的严重生态环境问题,运用生态足迹模型,采用多源数据,首次对大安市生态环境的可持续发展状况进行了定量研究;在此基础上,运用相对指标法对可持续发展的量化结果进行分级。研究表明,2001年大安市的生态需求大于生态供给,生态呈现“供不应求”的局面,人均生态赤字为0.56hm2,处于弱不可持续发展状态。     

基于生态足迹理论的天津市可持续发展动态研究

利用生态足迹分析方法对天津市1989—2008年的生态足迹进行了计算和分析。计算结果表明：天津市人均生态足迹由1989年的1.64 hm2上升到2008年的1.65 hm2;同期的人均生态承载力则由0.27 hm2逐年上升到0.32 hm2;人均生态赤字由1.36 hm2降到1.32 hm2。虽然天津市人口对自然资源的利用呈下降趋势、生态足迹与生态承载力之间的矛盾有所减缓,但生态足迹目前仍然超出了自然生态系统的生态承载力范围,现有的发展模式是不可持续的,生态环境处于较不安全的状态。     

温州城市生态系统演化和可持续发展能力分析

文章构建了温州城市生态系统演化分析的指标体系,应用信息熵法建立了量化模型对温州生态系统演化和可持续发展能力进行分析。结果表明：造林面积和人均消费性支出指标对温州城市系统社会经济发展水平以及其与自然生态系统的协调程度影响最大,工业粉尘排放量和迹地更新指标对温州城市代谢系统的发展水平以及协调程度影响最大。近10年来,温州城市生态系统经历了氧化型代谢（1996～1999）—还原型代谢（2000～2002）—氧化型代谢（2003～2005）三个阶段的演变,表明温州城市代谢系统的发展水平以及协调程度不稳定,与自然生态系统协调程度降低,城市生态系统的协调度有待提高,系统活力有待改善,温州城市生态系统应重点调控温州的工业企业,重视水土流失问题,加强封山育林工作。温州城市可持续发展能力也分为三个阶段：可持续发展能力降低阶段（1996～2000）,基本稳定提高阶段（2001～2004）,二次降低阶段（2005）,这表明温州生态系统已处于不稳定状态,在调整的过程中更应该注意调整政策稳定性、适用性和合理性。     

1990—2010年中国人口预期寿命与人均GDP的相关关系及其变化特征

预期寿命是反映人口寿命水平的重要指标,人均GDP是反映经济发展的重要指标。采用相关分析和回归分析对中国1990—2010年市域、县域两个尺度的预期寿命与人均GDP的关系进行分析,结果表明:人均GDP对预期寿命具有显著正向影响,但累积影响强于即时影响;人均GDP超过3000~5000元后,其对预期寿命的影响开始出现边际递减效应;人均GDP对预期寿命的影响强度在空间分布上自东向西增强。由于经济相对发达的东部地区人均GDP对预期寿命的贡献率要小于经济相对落后的西部地区,因此,今后东部地区应通过完善社会保障、优化卫生资源配置、倡导健康生活方式等途径进一步提高预期寿命,西部地区则应大力发展区域经济,努力提高生活水平,以尽快缩小与东部地区预期寿命的差距。