Land degradation is a global problem that seriously threatens human society. However, in China and elsewhere, ecological restoration still largely relies on a traditional approach that focuses only on ecological factors and ignores socioeconomic factors. To improve the effectiveness of ecological restoration and maximize its economic and ecological benefits, a more efficient approach is needed that provides support for policy development and land management and thereby promotes environmental conservation. We devised a framework for assessing the value of ecosystem services that remain after subtracting costs, such as the opportunity costs, costs of forest protection, and costs for the people who are affected by the program; that is, the net value of ecosystem services (NVES). To understand the difference between the value of a resource and the net value of the ecosystem service it provides, we used data on VES, timber sales, and afforestation costs from China's massive national afforestation programs to calculate the net value of forest ecosystem services in China. Accounting for the abovementioned costs revealed an NVES of ¥6.1 × 1012 for forests in 2014, which was 35.9% less than the value calculated without accounting for costs. As a result, the NVES associated with afforestation was 55.9% less than the NVES of natural forests. In some regions, NVES was negative because of the huge costs of human-made plantations, high evapotranspiration rates (thus, high water opportunity costs), and low forest survival rates. To maximize the ecological benefits of conservation, it is necessary to account for as many costs as possible so that management decisions can be based on NVES, thereby helping managers choose projects that maximize both economic and ecological benefits. 相似文献
Solar‐driven interfacial water evaporation is a promising strategy to produce clean water by effectively converting abundant solar energy into localized heat. However, many previously reported interfacial evaporation systems are separate and costly. In this work, an all‐in‐one interfacial water evaporator with flexibility, low‐cost, and large‐scale production based on electrostatic flocking technology is proposed. Hydrophilic microfibers (flocks) are vertically planted on the upper side of the textile substrate to enhance the light trapping for photothermal conversion and lower the latent heat for more efficient evaporation. On the other side of the textile, a highly dense and vertically aligned array of hydrophobic flocks are prepared to form a continuous air layer, reducing heat conduction from absorber to bulk water. Taking advantage of those features, the all‐in‐one evaporator achieves a good evaporation rate of 1.32 kg m−2 h−1 for pure water and 1.10 kg m−2 h−1 for seawater. Simultaneously, the evaporator demonstrates resistance to salt accumulation, resulting in its stability in brine. This all‐in‐one evaporator represents an innovative way for designing interfacial evaporators and a convenient approach to mitigate the global freshwater scarcity. 相似文献
The background, concept, connotation, principles, and methods of eco-planning for an Eco-Demonstration Park (EDP) and sustainability were examined based on a case study of the Luhua EDP in the Chongming Island of Shanghai, China, which is an important part of Shanghai Eco-city planning and construction in the 21st century. By analyzing natural, social and economic conditions, calculating population using the land capacity eco-model, eco-function zoning, and eco-construction, an innovative eco-industrial structure and technical chain were formulated. A comprehensive eco-planning scheme for the EDP was proposed, including planning and management strategies for subsystems of efficient industry, good quality human settlement, high standard eco-construction and eco-tourism as well as effective environmental protection and attractive landscape. The EDP should be an area with coordinated and sustainable economic, social and environmental subsystems. Eco-planning for the EDP should be a very important part of eco-city planning and sustainability. The paper aims to set up a theoretical framework and practical basis for eco-planning and promoting harmony between human and nature. 相似文献
Environmental sustainability is the foundation and of great significance for the sustainable development of urban agglomerations. Taking the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration as an example, we developed a method to effectively assess long-term regional environmental sustainability based on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. We used the GEE to obtain 5206 Landsat remote sensing images in the region from 1983 to 2016 and developed the comprehensive environmental index (CEI) to assess regional environmental sustainability based on the theme-oriented framework proposed by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. We found that the environmental sustainability of the urban agglomeration showed a trend of first rising, then falling, and then rising again in the past 30 years. The average CEI increased from 0.621 to 0.631 from 1985 to 1990, dropped to the lowest value of 0.618 in 2000, and then rose to the highest value of 0.672 in 2015. In particular, the extent of areas in which environmental sustainability improved (56% of the region) was greater than the extent of areas in which environmental deterioration occurred. The environmental sustainability of Hengshui, Xingtai, and Cangzhou in the southeast of the region has been significantly improved. The method proposed in this study provides an automatic, rapid, and extensible way to assess regional environmental sustainability and provides a scientific reference for improving the sustainability of the regional environment.
The background, concept, connotation, principles, and methods of eco-planning for an Eco-Demonstration Park (EDP) and sustainability
were examined based on a case study of the Luhua EDP in the Chongming Island of Shanghai, China, which is an important part
of Shanghai Eco-city planning and construction in the 21st century. By analyzing natural, social and economic conditions,
calculating population using the land capacity eco-model, eco-function zoning, and eco-construction, an innovative eco-industrial
structure and technical chain were formulated. A comprehensive eco-planning scheme for the EDP was proposed, including planning
and management strategies for subsystems of efficient industry, good quality human settlement, high standard eco-construction
and eco-tourism as well as effective environmental protection and attractive landscape. The EDP should be an area with coordinated
and sustainable economic, social and environmental subsystems. Eco-planning for the EDP should be a very important part of
eco-city planning and sustainability. The paper aims to set up a theoretical framework and practical basis for eco-planning
and promoting harmony between human and nature. 相似文献
China has among the highest biodiversities in the world, but faces extreme biodiversity losses due to the country’s huge population and its recent explosive socioeconomic development. Despite huge efforts and investments by the government and Chinese society to conserve biodiversity, especially in recent decades, biodiversity losses may not have been reversed, and may even have been exacerbated by unintended consequences resulting from these projects. China’s centralized approach to biodiversity conservation, with limited local participation, creates an inflexible and inefficient approach because of conflicts between local communities and national administrators over the benefits. Although community-based conservation may be an imperfect approach, it is an essential component of a successful future national conservation plan. Biodiversity conservation should be considered from the perspective of systems engineering and a governance structure that combines centralization with community-level conservation. In this paper, we describe China’s complex challenge: how to manage interactions between humans and nature to find win–win solutions that can ensure long-term biodiversity conservation without sacrificing human concerns. 相似文献
Nature can survive without humans, but humans cannot survive without nature. Despite a clear understanding of this dependency, humans continue to exist in disharmony with nature, and our current environmental and human dilemmas reflect old problems with a long history. Societies have historically experienced many transitions from harmony between nature and society to a crisis of disharmony, followed by a subsequent transition from crisis to harmony. Such ecological crises arise when society no longer practices sustainable consumption of resources within the limits imposed by the environmental carrying capacity. Over the long term, the growth in human desires has always exceeded the growth in the environmental carrying capacity. Science, technology, and social institutions must all be improved to resolve the ecological crises that arise from this imbalance. This paper discusses how increasing understanding of the problem by the public and by decision makers is the key to minimizing the undesirable impacts of the coming bottleneck for sustainable development. Furthermore, we emphasize how this awareness must be translated into fundamental political and economic changes. 相似文献