Coordination Study on Ecological and Economic Coupling of the Yellow River Basin

Abstract

The coupling and coordination relationship between ecology and the economy in the Yellow River Basin is a hot topic in sustainable development research. Said research has important guiding significance for the ecological security and comprehensive development of the Yellow River Basin. Taking the Yellow River Basin as the object of our study, based on the data of the economy, energy consumption data, ecology data and water resources data, we construct an indicator system of the economic development and ecological status of the Yellow River Basin and use the principal component analysis method to calculate the economic development and ecological status index. Then, we use the evaluation method, the coupling degree model and the coupling coordination degree model to analyze the time and space evolution trends of economic development and ecological state, coupling degree and coupling coordination degree. The results show that: (1) From 2000 to 2018, the economic development index of the Yellow River Basin rose steadily; the ecological status index showed a slow rise and then a downward trend. (2) The degree of coupling between economic development and ecological state has been considered as intensity coupling after 2005. The coupling trend slowly increased and then decreased, indicating that the interaction effect between the economy and ecology was first significantly enhanced and then slowly weakened. (3) The degree of coupling coordination increased from 0.2994 to 0.6266 and then decreased to 0.5917, reflecting the continuous improvement of the relationship between the regional economy and the ecological environment and the trend toward coordination. From 2015 to 2018, due to the gradual increase in the difference between economic development and ecological conditions, the coupling and coordination between the two decreased. Studies have shown that ecological construction and protection should be strengthened to ease the contradiction between the economy and ecology and achieve coordinated development.

The Coordinated Development and Regulation Research on Public Health, Ecological Environment and Economic Development: Evidence from the Yellow River Basin of China

“…The ecological environment coordinated development index shows a trend of a wave-like rise [ 49 ], which can be attributed to the promotion of environmental protection awareness among people, the improvement of the environmental protection system, and the construction of large-scale basic environmental protection facilities. Taking 2012 as a key turning point, the ecological environment development index before 2012 was on a declining curve, which proves the rapid economic development in the basin led to the deterioration of the ecological environment [ 48 , 50 ]. While after 2012, the governance of ecological environmental protection, coordinated economic development, and the transformation and upgrading of heavily polluting enterprises were enhanced under the guidance of the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” and the “Thirteenth Five-Year Plan”, as a result, the ecological environment system and economic development system appear with an upward trend again.…”

“…According to existing theoretical results [ 44 ], we construct the index system from three subsystems of ecological environment, economic development, and public health system to measure the coordinated development level of the Yellow River Basin. The existing research results, which have established two index systems of economic development and ecological development, are limited [ 48 ]. First, the original index system only considered the two dimensions of economic structure and resource consumption when measuring economic development.…”

“…Based on the above processes, we draw some conclusions: The coordinated development index of the public health, ecological environment, and economic development, during the study period, shows an increasing trend [ 34 , 49 ]. The ecological environment index ( EEDI ) has a higher base value but the slowest growth rate compared with the ecological environment index and economic index [ 48 ]. The base value of the public health index ( PHDI ) and the growth rate are in the middle level.…”

“…When discussing the coordinated development level of the upstream, midstream, and downstream, the upstream comes last, followed by the midstream, with the downstream topping the table [ 34 ]. As for the coordinated development level of the nine provinces, Shandong and Sichuan are at the peak levels, which are close to coordination [ 48 ]. While Ningxia and Qinghai are ranked the worst performers, which is still at a basically uncoordinated level.…”

On the Coupling and Coordination Development between Environment and Economy: A Case Study in the Yangtze River Delta of China

“…They found that there is a disconnection between the economic subsystem and the resource-environment subsystem. In a case study of the Yellow River Basin, Zhao et al [ 11 ] found that ecological construction is important to eliminate the contradiction between environment and economy. In the coupling coordinated development research of 31 provincial capital cities in China, Fan et al [ 12 ] discovered that the coordination development of economy and environment is vital to sustainable development.…”