Download The Index System Research for Assessing New Eco-rural Region

The Index System Research for Assessing New Eco-rural Region
Wang Dan
Economics and Trade faculty, Jiangxi Agricultural University, 330045
Abstract: This paper put forward the conception of new eco-rural region and analyzed its connotation
and background, and on the basis of it, it constructed an indexes system for assessing new eco-rural
region. The indexes system consisted of 4 categories such as productive forces, the ecological
environment pressure, the ecological environment state and the ecological environment responds,
including 24 indexes, reflecting the ecological condition completely and dynamically.
Key words: New eco-rural region
assessing indexes system
1 Introduction
Considering the overall situation of Chinese characteristic socialism modernization, China's 16th
Party Congress explicitly proposed that the problem of " agriculture, rural area, peasant problems”
should be solved as the focus of CCP’s entire work, and that the construction of socialism new rural
should be significant strategic mission. The socialism new rural is the new rural of " developed
production, ample life, civilized local custom, pleasant environment, democratic government “. It is not
only developed in economy, but also in ecology and political.
According to the modern ecology theory, countryside is one kind of region ecosystem with special
shape in our country. Its typical ecological sensitive area with sole industrial structure, big scale
population, broad spatial scope, and intensely inhomogeneous. Therefore, it’s of important theoretical
and practice significance to reasonably establish a set of indexes system of assessing ecology levels,
which can carry on the measurement to countryside ecology level, promulgates its existing question, and
provide the policy-making service for the countryside sustainable development. This article will attempt
to put forward the conception of new eco-rural region and then establish an indexes system to assess
new eco-rural region under the background of socialism new rural reconstruction.
2 The connotation and background of new eco-rural region
2.1 The connotation of new eco-rural region
There are several papers concerning the conception of Eco-rural Region as follows:
Weng boqi has put forward the conception of Eco-rural in the paper new progress of sustainable
agriculture----the construction of Eco-rural. He expounded in the paper that the rural area is guided by
the principles of ecology and eco-economics, is for the goal of the harmonious of ecological, economic
and society, and it could set up multi-layer, multi-function and well-structured village combination and
productive system with the methodology of systematic engineering and modern technology, which can
support the beneficial circulation and sustainable development of ecology and economy. Zhu Yuelong
pointed out that the essence of Eco-rural is all-around ecological agricultural progress in his paper
Eco-rural--- ideal mode of rural area in future. Sun Xinzhang thought that Eco-rural could achieved
effective agriculture, higher income and improved village through optimizing design of
nature---economic---society in rural area and villages ecological civilization construction by using the
theory of agronomy, ecology, economics, systematic science and sociology in his paper ecological rural
engineering---new concept of solving the problems of agriculture, rural area, peasant.
In a word, new eco-rural region is corresponded to eco-city in space at this paper, and it is the
inheritor and development from traditional concept of eco-village. Under the background of the
construction of new eco-rural region and rural-urban integration, and the trend of sustainable
development, it adopts eco-economics, ecological engineering principle, scenery-ecology, ecological
architecture, industry-ecology, and society- ecology theory and combined ecological theory of
economics, nature and sociology to resolve a series of unharmonious problems in rural development
process. On the basis of the strategy of developing both production and ecology, it conducts rural
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economy and social development and its all-around construction in the following aspects: industry
development, housing surrounding, ecology environment and social civilization.
2.2 Background
2.2.1 The problem of " agriculture, rural area, peasant problems” should be resolved in a more
systematical and macroscopic perspective.
As far as China concerned, we can develop agriculture by enhancing agricultural production,
increasing the farmers’ income, stabilizing the countryside, and improving the environmental. In other
words, it should be developed in the big system of ecology-society-economy. After entering into the 21st
century, the South Korean government persisted the policy to advance the new village movement, and it
has obtained extremely good effect that the economy of cities and countryside kept a balanced
development tendency, so as to create and realize a developing nation’s development pattern with
extremely unusual development. The first stage of South Korean’s new village movement is to hit the
foundation stage (1970-1973). At this stage, the “improving environment movement" was mainly
implemented, so ecology improvement may be supposed to be the first step of new rural reconstruction.
China's 17th Party Congress has already explicitly proposed the construction of socialism new
countryside, which can help China construct countryside area into an ideal pattern with reasonable
layout, moderate population, pleasant living environment, coordinately developing industries,
harmonious relationship between nature and people and among people, as well as sustainable
developing of social, economy and ecology, which combines the characteristic of both traditional
countryside and modern civilization.
2.2.2 The ecological and environment problem of China countryside is extremely serious. Here are
examples:
2.2.2.1 Too much pollutant excrement in rural area.
The national countryside livestock excrement is 181.84 billion tons, equal to 314 times industry
excrement. According to the chemical examination analysis, when the peasant household feed farm,
each milliliter sewage averagely contains 330,000 colon bacillus and 640,000 intestines germs, in
addition that the excrement has not been able promptly to process, it would create the massive mosquito
and fly evil to live, not only seriously pollutes the environment, but also directly affects poultry's
survival rate just as pig, chicken, duck and so on under this kind of condition. It would enhance the
preventing and controlling cost, reduce the raising benefit; meanwhile it can cause the serious
environmental pollution as a result of using disinfectants medicine massively.
2.2.2.2 Overuse of chemical fertilizer and agricultural chemicals excessively
Our country’s fertilizer amount per unit farming has surpassed the world mean value, in particular
nitrogenous fertilizer amount used excessively. On the one hand it created that nitrate amount in the
agricultural product exceeded the allowed figure, simultaneously polluted the ground water and the
surface water. Our country agricultural chemicals using rate only has 30% -40%, and is lower 20
percentage points than developed country averagely. Sprayed agricultural chemicals have 23 percentage
scattered in the air or the inflow soil, not only has polluted the air, the soil and the water, increased
agricultural product pesticide residue, but also enhanced preventing and controlling plant disease cost.
2.2.2.3 Lack of cultivated land, which is reducing
Because cities quickly expand and village industries blindly develop in recent years, massive
farming has been occupied. At present, our country’s farming is decreasing progressively by nearly

600,000 hm
2
every year.
3 The principal and the basic ideas of constructing the indexes system of new
eco-rural region
3.1 The principal of constructing the indexes system of New Eco-rural Region
According to the connotation of new Eco-rural region, its assessing indexes system should reflect
the ecological level of New eco-rural region and its transformation completely, truly and quantitatively.
Constructing this indexes system should go by such principal as follows:
3.1.1
Being scientific.
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The indexes should objectively existent, their concepts should be clear about, and have their certain
independent connotations; should reflect the change characteristic of ecological level in time and spatial.
3.1.2
Being systematic.
There are intrinsic relations between each appraisal index and its reflected ecological characteristic.
A single index only reflects some aspect of ecological quality; the indexes system with mutual relation is
able to reflect the overall characteristic of ecological quality.
3.1.3
Being purposive.
The indexes system ought to be able to reflect the main ecological question existed or latent at the
present economical level.
3.1.4
Being comparative.
The index should fully consider the gradualness of production development and ecological
government, as well as the unceasing change of ecological environment, enables the selected index to
have both the longitudinal continuity, and the crosswise commensurability of the different region
ecological government effect.
3.1.5
Being quantitative.
The index should be easy quantified and obtained, and the value of each index should be consistent
with the benefit that it reflects.
3.2 The basic ideas of constructing indexes system
They have different points concerning about constructing indexes system in home and abroad
scholars:
Weng Boqi thinks that Eco-rural is a combined system. Villages are active basic units in vast rural
area, and their sustainable development depends on lasting supplying resource, the harmony between
production, living and ecological function, spontaneously adjusting ability of nature resource system,
social-economy self organizing and self adjusting, the harmonious action between social
macro-adjusting sectors and people’s supervising and participating intention, the weakness of which
could influence other parts of the system and sustainable development process so that we should
synthesize, analyze and macro-adjust according the overall villages construction and region
supervization. It emphasis overall effects, biological and environmental evolution together, living
peacefully, animal and plant reciprocally living together, energy utilization in many levels and material
circulation and re-production.
Zhu Yuelong thinks that Eco-rural systematical structure included five ecological system, courtyard,
village, agriculture, economy and society, which are embodied by inner function of production, living
and ecology and outer function of tourism, education and example.
Sun Xinzhang believes that the idea of Eco-rural included not only ecological problems but also
economy and social problems so that assessing New eco-rural region index should be vast, and it
concerned agricultural resource utilization, agricultural production environmental influence, peasants
income, peasants employment situation, peasants burden, peasants basic medic and living guarantee,
rural public security, relationship between leaders and the masses, basic facility construction and so on.
Based on researches organized by Canada government, OECD and UNEP jointly presented
environmental index PSR model at the end of 1980s which are Pressure, State and Response model,
under which one environmental issue could be expressed by three different but related indexes. The
pressure index reflects the burden aroused by human action, and the state index reflects the situation of
environmental quality, nature resource and ecological system, and the response index reflects human
measure. PSR model rests on reciprocal influence between human and environmental system, and
classified environmental indexes according the assort of PSR. The model clearly positioned each index
in the system, so it is well systematic.
In summary, predecessor's researches were mostly limited to the interior discussion of ecosystem
and economical system respectively. They has neglected the transformation relations between two
system, thus will consider producing and ecology protection as contradictory. However, producing and
ecology are equal important in the construction of new eco-rural region. In the rural scope and the
agricultural domain, the natural resource is without doubt "the ecology productive forces" (although this
general knowledge is frequently neglected), especially along with the day after day development of
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circulation agriculture, the agricultural production doesn’t mean environmental pollution or ecology
destroy any longer, this also is the reason of this indexes system will specially design the index of
"ecology productive forces”. So this paper synthesized each scholar’s viewpoint about the indexes
system of new Eco-rural, and based on PSR model and combined with level analyzing approach it build
up four levels indexes system of new Eco-rural. The 1st level is object level, accessing aim, also New
eco-rural region assessing index; The 2nd level is the item level: referring to PSR model and based on
New eco-rural region connotation it will makes the adjustment, specifically selects the productive forces,
the ecological environment pressure, the ecological environment condition, the ecological environment
responds four projects, reflects New eco-rural region not only have to pay great attention to the ecology
protection, simultaneously but also must be able to guarantee the production development; The 3rd level
is assessing the factor level, namely which factors make assessing criterion specifically; The 4th level is
the index level, namely which concrete indexes express each assessing factor .
4 The indexes system of assessing New Eco-rural Region
4.1The indexes system table of assessing New Eco-rural Region
The indexes system of assessing New eco-rural region is composed by four kind of indexes groups
including the productive forces, the ecological environment pressure, the ecological environment state
and the ecological environment responds (table 1).
Table 1: The Indexes system Table of Assessing New Eco-rural Region
Object
Item level
Assess factor level
Index level
level
Productive forces Ecological environment
index group
index group
pressure
The exponential of assessing New Eco-rural Region
Economical
forces
productive
Farmer’s average net income per person
Rate of NPP usage1
Ecology productive forces
Agricultural net output value of unit acreage
Pressure
population
caused
by
Population density
Population natural rate of growth
Average cultivated area per person
Pressure caused by land
Rate of forest taken back from plow land
Proportion of land reduction area
Pressure caused by water
resources
1
Farmland irrigation rate
Net primary productivity (NPP) is the basis of matter and energy cycle of various ecosystems and the
direct reflection of plant community productivity in certain natural environments. It is defined as the
difference of organic matter produced by photosynthesis and consumed by respiration of green plants
per unit time and space. In recent years, it has been becoming the focus of research. From the view of
the global change research, terrestrial NPP is one of the most-modeled ecological parameters, and the
central carbon-related variable that summarizes the interface between plant and other process. The total
average annual NPP in China was 3050.9Mt/a. The spatial change of NPP was remarkable, and it
decreased from southeast toward northwest. Seasonal variations of NPP in China were also prominent.
The NPP of three months from July to September was about 51.6% of the total, while NPP was rather
lower (178.9Mt/month) in January and February.
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Living water using quantity per person
Amount of chemical fertilizer used
Pressure caused by pollutant
Other pollutant
Pressure caused by energy
Average energy possessed per person
Ecological environment state indexEcological environment
group
index group
Forest coverage
State of resources
Drinking water quantified rate
Farmland duplicate index
Economic loss brought by the rural environmental
pollution
Proportion of population who is above the high
duty
State of environment
State of population
Population mean lifetime
Stability
Bearing capacity
Resist-ability against natural calamities
Environmental
protection
disbursement’s
proportion of GDP
Environmental
protection
disbursement’s
proportion of agricultural disbursement
Investment strength
response
Perfect degree of legal laws and regulations
Holding of law
Execution of legal laws and regulations
4.2 The explanation for the indexes system
4.2.1 Productive forces index group
This crowd mainly reflects the productivity of new Eco-rural, and its next level of assessing factor
level divides into the economical productive forces and the ecology productive forces, so as to
synthetically reflect the natural productivity and the economical productive forces of new Eco-rural.
4.2.2 Ecological environment pressure index group
This crowd emphatically reflects rural system’s pressure brought about by the new eco-rural region
system’s subsystem of population, land, water resources, pollutant and energy. These indexes also are
primary factors restricted the countryside’s sustainable development. The population subsystem
mainly inspects population density at present and the system pressure from its nature growth; the
resources subsystem emphatically reflects the indexed relevant to husbandry resources and water
resources in particular because the cultivated area and its irrigation degree not only are the important
factor restricted agricultural production speaking of the agricultural production ability at present, also
are important causes of frequent rural natural disaster and unstable agricultural production; The urban
economic development has experienced the energy bottleneck and the pollutant pressure, so this indexes
system has specially established pollutant subsystem and energy subsystem to reflect the pressure they
bring to New eco-rural region in order to dynamically reflect the possibly problems in the new rural
reconstruction in the future.
4.2.3 Ecological environment state index group
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This crowd synthetically reflects system mode from three aspects such as the resources, the
environment as well as the population. The resource subsystem still mainly set about the land and
water resources, using the farmland duplicate index, forest coverage and drinking water quantified rate
to reflect the use condition of rural resources. The environment condition will be indicated by the
economic loss brought by the rural environmental pollution. It should be taken notice of that this index
is a negative one. In other words, this index should bestow on the negative value in the concrete
computation. The population condition is reflected by the population mean lifetime and the proportion
of population who is above the high duty.
4.2.4 Ecological environment response index group
The system response index group should emphatically reflect the reaction and countermeasure
which the system facing the pressure of each subsystem including population, resources, environment,
economy, society and so on. This indexes system consists of three parts that are bearing capacity,
investment strength and the holding of law. The bearing capacity reflects the natural system’s disaster
response of New eco-rural region with the resist-ability against natural calamities and the stability. The
investment strength uses the government’s investment for the environmental pollution and the ecology
destroying which makes to reflect the degree that government protecting the rural ecological
environment. The holding of law reflects the long term countermeasure of rural environmental
protection from a more basic aspect.
5 Conclusions
5.1 This article has constructed the indexes system for synthetically assessing New eco-rural region
from ecology angle, which consisted of 4 categories such as productive forces, the ecological
environment pressure, the ecological environment state on and the ecological environment responds,
including 24 indexes. The indexes system is an organically associative integrity with close relation that
can’t be cut apart.
5.2 The indexes system can objectively, comprehensively reflect quality improvement of eco-rural,
increment of ecological resources reserve value, as well as the dynamic change process of region
sustainable development potential. Using the indexes system to assess the synthesis benefit of rural
development, will highlight that the rural reconstruction emphasizes not only the economic efficiency,
but also the construction and protection of ecological environment. Because the ecological environment
is the foundation, the economic efficiency is the guarantee; the region sustainable development is the
ultimate objective for rural construction.
5.3 Assessing indexes system not only highlighted the prevention of ecological environment, also have
much forecast, preventing the situation of rural economy developing but ecological quality more and
more worsening.
5.4. The indexes system makes the assessed result more scientific, more conforms to the actual situation,
and provides the effective information. It also directs the implementation of eco-rural project, the
selection of government model and the assessing of eco-rural, and provides reason for the scientific
administration of rural sustainable development.
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