生态足迹理论在能源消费评价中的缺陷与改进探讨

生态足迹从生物生产力的角度定量测度人类消费活动对生态环境的综合性影响,是目前应用范围最广、关注程度最高的可持续发展评价方法,具有简明易懂、便于操作、易与其他指标结合等优点。论文在总结国内外主要研究成果与进展的基础上,针对现有评价结果较为悲观、难以真实反映人类消费对生态环境影响等问题,系统归纳和分析了生态足迹理论在能源消费评价中的5项缺陷:①参数选取面临两难;②度量标准存在矛盾;③互斥假设有违事实;④研究内容涵盖不全;⑤评价结果部分失真。据此提出了有针对性的改进建议,并认为前三项缺陷必须尽快修正,后两项缺陷需要逐步克服。还应通过学科交叉引入更多经济社会指标进行综合判断,以促进区域可持续发展评价这一系统性工程的不断完善。

Discussion on Shortcomings and Improvement of Ecological Footprint Theory in Energy Consumption Assessment

Ecological footprint, which quantifies the comprehensive impact of human consumption activities on eco-environment from a standpoint of biological productivity, is the most widely used and concerned method of sustainable development assessment in the world by now. Ecological footprint is excellent in conciseness, understandability, maneuverability and easily being combined with other indicators, but still couldn’t reflect the impact of human consumption activity on eco-environment factually and exactly because of its hyper-pessimistic evaluation results. Based on the review and summary of the main achievements and progress in this research field home and abroad, the shortcomings of ecological footprint theory in energy consumption assessment are analyzed and concluded systematically to solve this problem in the following aspects: Firstly, the parameters, including equivalence factor, yield factor and energy factor, all are in a dilemma; Secondly, the measure standards between ecological footprint and ecological carrying capacity are in contradiction; Thirdly, the assumption that biologically productive land use types are mutually exclusive goes against the objective fact; Fourthly, the studies on the issues are not comprehensive; Lastly, the evaluation results are partly incorrect with the defects of relativity, limitation and ecological deviation. Among these five shortcomings mentioned above, the former three items should be modified as soon as possible, while the latter two items need to be gradually overcome in the future. And there are some pertinent measures and improvement suggestions put forward and discussed to improve ecological footprint theory. Moreover, in order to perfect the systemic project of regional sustainable development assessment, more economic-social indicators should be introduced into the further research on ecological footprint through interdisciplinary collaboration.