Quantitative Evaluation of Sustainable Development Based on Ecological Footprint Method: A Case Study of Tianjin

Since the concept of sustainable development emerged in the late 1980s, more and more countries and regions have been utilizing sustainable development as their developing strategy. But decades have passed without any effective methods available to quantitatively assess sustainable development. Since the ecological footprint evaluation method initiated in 1992, it has become popular in quantitative assessment of sustainable development because of it's convenience, easy-understanding, and reliability. As one of the biggest coastal cities in north China and the economic center of the Bohai Coastal Region, Tianjin's gorss domestic product (GDP) was 369.762 billion yuan in 2005, accounting for 2.0% of the whole nation's GDP. The paper analyzes Tianjin's development with the ecological footprint method, and the results show that Tianjin's ecological footprint and biocapacity in 2005 were 2.507 gha/cap and 0.276gha/cap respectively. The ecological deficit was 2.230gha/cap. And from 1980 to 2005, Tianjin's ecological deficit per 10^4 yuan GDP decreased; while per capita ecological deficit has been tending to increase rapidly in recent years. All these results demonstrate that Tianjin is in a state of unsustainable development.