Resource Productivity in Tianjin Based on Ecological Footprint
Jian Li, Zhe Pan
School of Management, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin, China
(lijian631219@163.com, panzhe360@126.com)
Abstract - 1This paper regards the ecological footprint
as the comprehensive indicator of natural resource to
Calculation and analysis the resource productivity in Tianjin
from 2000 to 2010. The results indicated that the resource
productivity generally represented the trend of escalation in
Tianjin. The resource productivity increased 1.66 times from
1128.778 yuan per hectare in 2000 to 3005.613 yuan per
hectare in 2010, the average annual increase value was
187.68 yuan per hectare. The GDP growth rate of Tianjin
exceeded the growth rate of ecological footprint, but the
growth rate of resource productivity is less than GDP growth
rate. So the pressure on the environment in Tianjin still
increases gradually. The growth rate gap between resource
productivity and GDP has narrowed since 2003. This is
consistent with the fact of more pollution disposal
investment, higher resource productivity and better
environmental quality.
Key words - Ecological footprint; Resource productivity;
IPAT model; Tianjin
I.
definition which expanded resource productivity from the
output per unit resource input to the service attached to
per resource. From the essence of sustainable
development, the emergence of MIPS is a great progress
undoubtedly.
Since the reform and opening up, China's economy
has been in a steady, rapid growth pattern, but economic
growth largely depends on the expense of resources, the
economic growth pattern is characterized by “high
investment, high consumption, high pollution”[6]. At
present, China is in a stage of accelerated development of
urbanization and industrialization. The contradiction
between economic development and environment and
resources protection is becoming increasingly acute[7].
Sustainable economic growth must be constrained by
resource bottlenecks, so we have to improve the
efficiency of resource utilization on the basis of
protecting environment.
II. METHODOLOGY
INTRODUCTION
At present, to develop recycling economy, and build
a resource-conserving and environment- friendly society
has become the important objectives of China, and the
key to achieve this goal is resource productivity theory.
Living Planet Report 2008 of World Wide Fund for
Nature (WWF) tells us, we consume resources too fast, so
that beyond the speed of updating of the resource. As
reckless spending causing economic recession, reckless
spending will also run out of global resources, and
endanger future prosperity[1]. Living Planet Report 2010
indicated that by 2030 the human will need two earth to
absorb carbon dioxide and to satisfy the demand for
natural resources[2].
The importance of resource productivity was
acknowledged in the very early, the British economist
Jevons had involved it in “coal crisis” in 1865[3].Since the
1990s, resource productivity research has entered a rapid
development period, and the definition and calculation
method formed a preliminary unity. In short, resource
productivity refers to output efficiency of resources [4].But
this definition has its narrowness and one-sidedness, so
the improvement of the definition continues on. For
example, Material Input Per Service Unit (MIPS) [5]
proposed by Hinterberger and Schmidt Bleek, is a
Fund Project: Tianjin Education Commission, the major project of
Social Sciences (2011ZD031,), Tianjin Science and Technology Plan
Project (11ZLZLZT08100), the Ministry of Education Humanities and
social science research projects (11YJA630046)
A. Principle
Resource productivity is the ratio between the Value
of a country or region or enterprise socio-economic
development and the physical quantity of resources and
environment consumption[8]. It represents the relationship
between economic growth and environmental pressures.
The resource productivity is a good substitute for labor
productivity, but the notion can’t be practiced in a feasible
way[9]. The reason is that no indicator has been found to
denote the collective consumption of natural resources.
Therefore，the only way is to estimate the productivity of
energy, land, water, materials individually.
Ecological footprint (EF) method presents a
methodologically simple but integrated frame work for
national natural accounting of capital[10]，which is capable
of measuring the impact of Human’s consumption on
ecosystem. Through the introduction of the ecological
productive area to realize the integrated of natural
resources ， the ecological footprint can measure the
consumption of natural resources comprehensively.
Therefore，EF can represent the input of all kinds of
natural resources in the production function in some way.
B. Ecological footprint
“Ecological footprint” (EF), refers to the biologically
productive land area (including land and water)
consumption of resources and services to produce a
certain population, and to absorb the waste these
populations produce[11]. All of the indicators which
ecological footprint method involved should be replaced
by the corresponding biologically productive land area.
This method not only reflects the occupation of the
natural capital, but also reflected the impact of human
consumption of natural.
C. Resource productivity
“Resource productivity” (RP) is a measure of the
resource use efficiency[12]. It combines ecological
footprint indicators and economic indicators to
comprehensively reflect the efficient use of resources.
“Resource productivity” (RP) is the ratio of GDP and
ecological footprint.
GDP
(1)
RP 
EF
EF refers to ecological footprint. Because natural
resource is limited, and in the mining will produce the
environment load, we should improve the resource
productivity to create more GDP by fewer resources.
D. Synergy effects of economic development and
environmental pressures
In the ideal state, human and nature should live in
harmony, co-evolution and balance each other.
This paper uses IPAT model to measure the
relationship among material consumption, environmental
degradation and economic growth.
IPAT model was first proposed by famous
demographer Ehrlich and Holdren of Stanford University.
It is actually an identity about the environmental impact
(I) , population (P), affluence (A) and technology (T) [13].
It can be expressed as:
(2)
I  P  AT
“A” represents the average annual per capita GDP. It
GDP
can be expressed as: A 
. From a resource
P
perspective, “T” represents the resource consumption per
EF
unit GDP, that is: T 
.
GDP
Considering that the resource productivity can
represent the relationship between economic growth and
environmental pressures, the IPAT model can be used to
analysis resource productivity. It can be seen that the RP
and T has a reciprocal relationship, equation (2) can be
expressed as:
P  A GDP
(3)
I

RP
RP
Set the base year's GDP and resource productivity for
GDP0 and RP0, the average annual growth rate of GDP
and resource productivity for RGDP and RRP, then GDP
and resource productivity in year n are as follows:
GDPn  GDP0 ( 1  RGDP )n
(4)
RPn  RP0 ( 1  RRP )n
(5)
The environment load of year n is:
In 
GDPn GDP0 ( 1  RGDP )n

RPn
RP0 ( 1  RRP )n
(6)
Equation (6) shows that, when GDP and resource
productivity has grown exponentially, the environmental
load (or resource consumption) may rise, remain
unchanged or decrease, its conditions are as follows:
(1) If RGDP  RRP , the environmental load (or
resource consumption) will increase with GDP growth
year by year, and the greater the difference between
RGDP and RRP, the faster environmental load (or
resource consumption) increases;
(2) If RGDP  RRP , the environmental load (or
resource consumption) and economic growth will achieve
"decoupling" (no matter how GDP grow, environmental
load or resource consumption will not rise);
(3) If RGDP  RRP , the environmental load (or
resource consumption) will decline with GDP growth
year by year, and the greater the difference between
RGDP and RRP, the faster environmental load (or
resource consumption) declines;
III. DATA COLLECTION AND PROCESSING
This paper uses a comprehensive method to calculate
the ecological footprint of Tianjin. The data is from
calendar year “Tianjin Statistical Yearbook”. In the data
collection process, according to the results already at
home and abroad, the actual situation in Tianjin, do the
following treatment:
A. Divided consumer items, and calculate the
consumption of major consumer items and waste
elimination on natural resources. In this paper, consumer
project is divided into three categories: the consumption
of biological resources (mainly the consumption of
agricultural products, livestock products, aquatic products
and forest products), energy consumption, building land.
B. The average yield data, these two types of
resource consumption were converted into the six
categories of ecological productivity of the main land and
water ecosystems in accordance with the region's
ecological capacity and waste elimination, the
assimilative capacity of the area (arable land, grassland,
woodland, fossil energy land, built land and waters)
C. Conversion. Per unit area of arable land, fossil
energy land, grassland, woodland and other biological
production capacity very different, in order to make the
calculation results into a standard of comparison, it is
necessary to multiply each of the biologically productive
area by an equivalence factor, to transfer it into unified,
comparable biological productive area. Equivalence
factors refer to the comparison of a certain type of land
with world average productivity of land. Each kind of
ecological system equivalence factor is determined by the
unit space area of each ecosystem type relative biomass
production. WWF's latest adjustment, namely: arable land,
2.19; grassland, 0.48; waters, 0.36; woodland, 1.35; built
land, 2.19; fossil energy land, 1.35 [14]. They weigh the
equivalence factors basing on the maximum potential
crop yields of the various types of land estimated by the
FAO Global agro-ecological zones (GAEZ) and the
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
(IIASA) [15]. In the specific calculation, because
continental shelf is the biggest currently available marine
resources so marine waters area mainly refers to the
continental shelf.
TABLE I
ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT AND ITS COMPONENTS IN TIANJIN FROM 2000 TO 2010
Per capita ecological footprint of various types land（hm2/person)
Year
Arable
Grassland
Fossil
Built
energy land
land
Woodland
Waters
land
Per capita
Population
Ecologica
ecological
（million）
l footprint
（hm2)
footprint
(hm2/person)
2000
0.224
0.5491
0.0043
0.7882
0.0311
0.0565
1.6532
912.00
15077184
2001
0.2436
0.5819
0.0043
0.9071
0.0375
0.0589
1.8332
913.98
16755081
2002
0.238
0.5973
0.0043
1.0726
0.0594
0.0596
2.0312
919.05
18667744
2003
0.2419
0.6089
0.0043
1.1132
0.0798
0.062
2.1101
926.00
19539526
2004
0.247
0.6064
0.0043
1.1936
0.0882
0.0651
2.2046
932.55
20558997
2005
0.2523
0.6131
0.0043
1.2376
0.1047
0.0657
2.2777
939.31
21394664
2006
0.2512
0.6149
0.0043
1.3368
0.1112
0.0661
2.3845
948.89
22626282
2007
0.2506
0.5654
0.0046
1.4463
0.1162
0.0683
2.4513
959.10
23510418
2008
0.2514
0.5764
0.0047
1.5634
0.1282
0.0685
2.5926
968.87
25118924
2009
0.2484
0.5896
0.0047
1.6273
0.1392
0.0704
2.6795
979.84
26254813
2010
0.243
0.6183
0.0051
1.6314
0.1134
0.0691
2.6803
984.85
26396935
TABLE II
TIANJIN RESOURCE PRODUCTIVITY
Ecological
Real GDP (one
Real GDP
Resource
Resource
footprint growth
hundred million
growth rate
productivity
productivity
rate（%）
yuan)
（%）
（yuan/ hm ）
growth rate（%）
Ecological
Year
footprint（hm2）
2
2000
15077184
—
1701.88
—
1128.778
—
2001
16755081
11.13
1720.312
1.1
1026.74
-9.04
2002
18667744
11.42
1931.084
12.3
1034.45
0.75
2003
19539526
4.67
2190.836
13.5
1121.233
8.39
2004
20558997
5.22
2600.487
18.7
1264.89
12.81
2005
21394664
4.06
3086.791
18.7
1442.785
14.06
2006
22626282
5.76
3691.184
19.6
1631.37
13.07
2007
23510418
3.91
4389.554
18.9
1867.068
14.45
2008
25118924
6.84
5298.238
20.7
2109.262
12.97
2009
26254813
4.52
6719.01
26.8
2559.154
21.33
2010
26396935
0.54
7933.898
18.1
3005.613
17.45
According to the calculated results finishing Table 2,
Table 2 is for the 2000-2010 real GDP in Tianjin, the
ecological footprint (EF) and resource productivity (RP)
values. In 2010, the GDP, ecological footprint (EF) and
resource productivity (RP), respectively, compared with
the 2000 increased by 442.0%, 75.1% and 209.6%, with
an average annual growth rate of 44.20%, 0.75% and
20.96% respectively.In the analysis of 11 years, Tianjin's
annual growth rate of resource productivity is less than
the annual GDP growth rate, and is consistent with
condition (1).
IV. CONCLUSION
Through the calculation of the Tianjin’s resource
productivity and the detailed analysis of the relationship
between economic development and environmental
pressure, the following main conclusions can be reached:
A. The analysis of Tianjin's GDP, the ecological
footprint (EF) and resource productivity (RP) in
2000-2010 shows that, Tianjin's GDP growth rate is
higher than the growth rate of the ecological footprint
(EF), but the growth rate of resource productivity is lower
than the GDP growth rate. That indicates that
environment pressure of Tianjin is still increasing.
B. Since 2003, GDP and resource productivity gap
was becoming narrowed. The reality is consistent with the
fact of more pollution disposal investment, higher
resource productivity and better environmental quality.
C. The resource productivity of Tianjin had a gradual
upward trend, but the IPAT model analysis results showed
that the “high investment, high consumption, high
pollution” mode of economic development had not
fundamental changed.
D. By improving resource productivity and
promoting the absolute reduction of consumption of
substances (or resource), the sustainable development of
Tianjin can be finally achieved.
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