Abstract:

In order to quantitatively analyze the emergy structure, features, and benefits of sustainable development capacity of ecological-economic system in Guizhou, the author analyzed the ecological-economic development of Guizhou Province between 2001-2010 by the emergy theory, and studied many indicators, such as fraction of emergy used derived from home sources, ratio of exported to imported emergy, emergy use per person, empower density, environmental loading ratio, and emergy-based for sustainable index and so on. The results showed that: (1) total emergy use (U) for Guizhou during 2001-2010 was increasing with average annual growth rate 11.34%, while more than half of emergy came from non-renewable resources and products, which indicated the increase of social and economic wealth was based on the development and utilization of local storage resources. (2) 99% emergy needed came from within the system, the system GDP increased year by year, per capita emergy used increased by an average annual growth rate of 11.14%, but environmental loading ratio increased at speed of 31.70% every year, which indicated that the growth of economic wealth was based on a greater speed of environmental destruction, and the sustainable index has been declined in this mode of development. (3) In fact, emergy output of agricultural subsystem was at the range of 4.82×1022-5.96×1022 sej, and its average annual growth rate was 1.88%. Meanwile, emergy inputting was at the range of 2.79×1023-3.14 ×1023 sej, and its average annual growth rate was -1.27%, which showed that the production efficiency of the subsystem agricultural continuously improved. (4) The proportion of agricultural subsystem was declining in the rate of 8.43%, which made the province’s industrial structure more optimized though changing its industrial structure from the ‘321’ into a ‘231’ type. Most of emergy inputting to agricultural subsystem was used for the agricultural import of labour, while, only little used for machinery, fertilizers, which indicated the level of modernization of agriculture in Guizhou was still very low.