Emergy Comparison of Typical Coastal Urban Ecosystems in China

Abstract

With outstanding geographical location and rich natural resources, coastal cities have become concentrated and active areas of human social and economic production. Furthermore, a large number of human activities have posed a great deal of ecological environmental pressure to coastal ecological areas. The emergy analysis method is selected to construct an index system with a total of nine indicators at five levels, including emergy source structure, social subsystem, economic subsystem, environmental subsystem, and comprehensive evaluation of sustainable development. The development level of subsystems and the sustainable development ability of ecosystem in Shenzhen, Dalian, Ningbo, Qingdao, and Xiamen were evaluated. The emergy sustainable index of the five cities is 0.10, 0.23, 0.31, 0.49, and 0.93, respectively. According to the evaluation results, coastal cities should comprehensively optimize the population structure, reasonably develop natural resources, make efficient use of marine resources, attach importance to the source control of pollutants, and strive to build a modern economy, so as to realize the sustainable development of coastal urban ecosystem.

Evaluation of Urban Sustainability Based on Development Structures and Economic Aggregates: A Case Study of Jiaxing, China

“…Fluctuating changes are observed in three indicators of waste loading ratio (WLR), environmental loading ratio (ELR), and environmental load rate based on ecoenvironmental costs (ELR EC ). Compared with other cities [25,42], higher values of WLR indicate that the waste discharged by urban development in Jiaxing continues to exert greater pressure on the local environment, which may cause serious damage to the natural subsystem of the city and restrict the development of the economic and social subsystems. If ELR > 10, it indicates a high environmental impact [43].…”

The Effect of Regional Industrial Restructuring on the Resource Environmental Carrying Capacity in Jingjiang City, Jiangsu Province, China

“…With the increasing depth of research, the characterization of the RECC has been expanded to include many concepts, such as the land carrying capacity [10][11][12][13], the water resource carrying capacity [14][15][16][17], the mineral resource carrying capacity [18], the environmental carrying capacity [19][20][21], and the ecological carrying capacity [22][23][24][25]. It is generally understood as the maximum economic scale and population that can be carried by the resource endowment and the environmental capacity of a certain area under the premise that the natural environment of a region is not damaged and the ecosystem remains well balanced [26,27].…”

Assessment and Suggestions on Sustainable Development of Regional Ecological Economy Based on Emergy Theory: A Case Study of Henan Province

“…For instance, Liu et al used emergy analysis to evaluate remanufacturing processing systems [24], while a separate study applied emergy analysis to assess and improve the sustainability, environmental, and economic impacts of one factory [25]. Sheikh et al applied emergy analysis to investigate the sustainability of production systems on degraded lands in India [26], whereas Qin et al used the same method to compare coastal ecosystems [27].…”

“…Hence, emergy analysis and eco-economic evaluation play a significant role in analyzing regional eco-economic systems [36]. Compare the ecosystems of coastal cities Qin, 2020 [27] Agricultural ecosystem Evaluate canola production systems Amiri, 2019 [30] Assessing the efficiency of potato agroecosystems Shahhoseini, 2022 [31] The application of emergy in aquaculture system was discussed David, 2021 [28] Regional eco-economic system Evaluate the sustainable development of regional ecological economy Wang, 2021 [32] The sustainability evaluation of 9 cities was analyzed and evaluated Yuan, 2022 [35] Evaluate the ecological efficiency of regional circular economy Liu, 2018 [36] The above studies analyzed the eco-economic systems of different fields from the perspective of emergy and put forward targeted policy recommendations according to the evaluation results. It provides reference for regional eco-economic practitioners and decision makers to take into account economic and ecological benefits.…”