Analysis of Environmental Carrying Capacity with Emergy Perspective of Jeju Island

Abstract

Jeju Island experienced an approximately 42% increase in energy consumption from 2006 to 2015 and the demand for energy consumption is expected to continue to increase. Thus, Jeju Island is planning a project entitled "Carbon Free Island by 2030" to promote sustainable development and is required to estimate the environmental carrying capacity for future energy demand changes. The purpose of this study was to calculate the emergy inherent in Jeju Island's energy, materials, and information in 2015 using the emergy analysis method and local characteristics. In addition, this study aimed to estimate the emergy indices to evaluate the environmental carrying capacity for sustainable development in 2005, 2015, and 2030 considering the future energy demand. This study's outputs provide the environmental carrying capacity with emergy indices, such as the percent renewable (%Renew), emergy yield ratio (EYR), environmental loading ratio (ELR), sustainability index (SI), and carrying capacity of the population (CCP) for social and economic activities on Jeju Island, which are expected to be saturated. These findings show regions with heavy tourism require development strategies, including the concept of environmental carrying capacity.

Evaluation and Forewarning Management of Regional Resources and Environment Carrying Capacity: A Case Study of Hefei City, Anhui Province, China

“…The concept "resources and environment carrying capacity (RECC)" covers the connotation of multiple dimensions, including resource, environment, ecology, disaster, society, and economy. In terms of the resource dimension, carrying capacity refers to the capacity of resources to supply the environmental system and human needs [6][7][8][9][10]; in terms of the environment dimension, carrying capacity refers to the maintenance function of good environmental quality with the dilution and self-purification of pollution; in terms of the ecology dimension, carrying capacity refers to the capacity to provide supply, adjustment, culture, and support for the existence of humans [11][12][13][14]; in terms of the social and economic dimension, carrying capacity refers to the intensity, scope, and relevant threshold of natural resources and environment to carry humans and social and economic activities of humans and, within the threshold system, the resource and environment system will not sustain obvious degeneration or collapse [14][15][16][17]. In addition, from the perspective of disaster response, there is the concept of disaster carrying capacity which refers to the overall resistance capacity of disaster carrying systems, including resources and the environment, to natural disasters [18,19].…”

Temporal and spatial evolution and obstacle diagnosis of resource and environment carrying capacity in the Loess Plateau

“…After continuously enriching the definition of RECC, scholars have begun to study methods and models. At present, the main evaluation methods for resource and environmental sustainability are environmental impact assessment [ 30 ], ecological footprint method [ 31 ], emergy analysis [ 32 , 33 ], and cluster analysis [ 34 , 35 ]. The main methods for determining the weight of the RECC index system are entropy method and analytic hierarchy process [ 36 – 38 ].…”

Environmental Carrying Capacity Assessment—the Policy Instrument and Tool for Sustainable Spatial Management

“…Therefore, the future spatial management of urbanized areas requires verification of available resources and the state of the environment (Świąder et al, 2018a) as a base for allocating land for a specific use, especially housing development. Such assessment could be provided within the framework of environmental carrying capacity (Zhang and Xu, 2010;Liu and Borthwick, 2011;Santoso et al, 2014;Wei et al, 2015;Jung et al, 2018).…”