可持续性评价的 ImPACTS等式

可持续发展要求必须在一个地球的约束下,最大限度地满足人类的发展需求。通过分析生态足迹与人类社会发展的关系,从可更新和不可更新资源利用效益角度来看,在发展的可持续性上发达国家比发展中国家在利用地球容纳环境和社会期望方面具有明显的优势。同时,气候变暖的事实说明,人类对不可更新化石燃料的开采和利用速率已经超过地球上生态系统吸收CO₂的能力。各国要取得社会发展并使之具有可持续性,应该在地球的可持续性尺度范围内增加自己的全球足迹份额,而不是简单的减少足迹。以中国的南水北调、北粮南运,粮食安全及世界石油消费利用为例说明了社会资源在缓解和减轻环境影响方面的作用。在剖析经典的IPAT等式及其变种等式ImPACT分析框架的基础上,提出了一个新的可持续性评价研究框架--ImPACTS等式,并讨论了新等式的政策含义。在ImPACTS等式中,新增项S代表社会资源的状态 (社会发展状态),m代表管理,用来强调人类采用协调的方式来解决超过可持续性尺度这一问题的重要性,I因此变成了集成的影响评价--对环境的影响和社会发展的损益评价。

ImPACTS Identity of Sustainability Assessment

Based on formal ImPACT identity which describes environmental impacts (Im) as a function of population(P), affluence(A), intensity use(C) and efficiency(T), a new "ImPACTS" identity as a framework for sustainability science was produced, where S denote the level of social resources, m is assigned to management and I is changed from formal environmental impacts to the trade-off between environmental impacts and development. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of ImPACTS by performing an empirical analysis of our integrated impacts assessment on the Earth by using existing data of Ecological footprint and Human development index. In an attempt to analyse the relationship between ecological footprint and social development using existing data, developed countries showed a great advantage over developing countries in terms of energy resource use efficiency due to their social and technological development. Global warming shows that humanity has gone beyond the sustainable scale of the Earth. We thus suggest that every country should increase its global share of ecological footprints within the sustainable scale of the Earth, rather than simply decrease its ecological footprints. The reason why current analysis contradicts the conventional ecological footprint analysis is that ecological footprint's concept simply considers the land embodied in goods and attributes a high ecological footprint value to high-income countries, and effects of trade on social development and in turn on the environment have not been considered. The ecological footprint analysis ignores the effects of development mainly in the stock of social resources on environment. The critical point in sustainable development is to harmonize environment and development. Examples from water shortage in northern China and China's food security and world energy consumption show that managing and mobilizing social resources should be considered as an alternative to mitigating human impacts on the environment and adapting to these impacts.