生态足迹的实证分析——中国经济增长中的生态制约

NATURAL RESOURCE LIMIT ON ECONOMIC GROWTH:AN EMPPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF RESOURCE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN CHINA

本文通过中国生态足迹的实证分析 ,讨论了生态系统在资源供给方面对经济增长的制约。资源生态足迹是生态足迹的主要部分 ,反映了经济系统的资源消费。计算发现 ,1961～ 1999年中国资源生态足迹持续增长 ,从 1961年的 3 .3亿hm2 逐年递增到 1999年的16.8亿hm2 ,年平均增长率为 4.4%。资源生态足迹的增长支持了同期的经济增长 ,但是 ,实证比较发现资源生态承载力大大低于资源生态足迹。这些实证结果表明 :一方面 ,中国经济持续增长造成了资源消费持续增加 ,而另一方面 ,中国生态系统资源供给能力有限 ,不能支持当前的资源消费及其增长。由于自然资源是经济系统进行生产的物质基础 ,其供给不足必将成为经济增长的制约因素。

On empirical analysis of ecological footprint in China, we discuss the ecosystem's limit on economic growth in natural resource supply. Resource ecological footprint, as the main part of ecological footprint, reflects the resource consumption in an economy system. In this paper, we calculate resource ecological footprint in China from 1961 to 1999 by the ecological footprint methods. The time serial of resource ecological footprint in this period shows an increasing trend. The resource ecological footprint was 0.33 billion hectares in 1961 and increased to 1.68 billion hectares in 1999. The average growth rate of resource ecological footprint was 4.4% per year. Such growth of resource ecological footprint supported economic growth, which was 8.2% per year on average in this period. To reflect the resource ecological footprint growth demanded by economic growth, we define resource ecological footprint elasticity coefficient (REFEC). The REFEC from 1961 to 1999 was about 0.5 on average, meaning that 1% economic growth demands 0.5% growth of resource ecological footprint. However, the comparison between resource ecological footprint and resource ecological capacity reveals that the resource ecological capacity was far below the current resource ecological footprint. For example, resource ecological capacity of 1.05 billion hectares in 1996 was far below the resource ecological footprint of 1.56 billion hectares in the same year. Our empirical analysis results reveal that the growth rate of resource consumption is quite high because of high economic growth rate on one hand, and the resource supply capacity of ecosystem is limited on the other hand, implying that the resource supply potential could not sustain the current resource consumption as well as its growth. Since natural resources are the material foundation for production in an economic system, the supply deficit will be one limiting factor of economic growth.