An emergy accounting based regional sustainability evaluation: A case of Qinghai in China

Featured with a unique geographic position and climate conditions, Qinghai is abundant with natural resources, making significant contribution to China's or even the world's ecological security. In order to evaluate its current sustainability and provide useful policy suggestions to improve its sustainable development, a systematic study on Qinghai's socio-economic system was conducted by applying emergy synthesis. Results show that the total emergy use for supporting Qinghai's economy was 5.13 × 1024 sej in 2015. The values of emergy to money, emergy density, and emergy used per person are 2.12 × 1013 sej/RMB, 7.11 × 1012 sej/m2, and 8.72 × 1017 sej/person, respectively. The holistic picture of Qinghai's socio-economic system is also uncovered based on the temporal analysis of emergy-based indicators. Results show that emergy yield ratio increased from 52.21 in 2002 to 164.10 in 2015. Similarly, the environmental loading ratio increased from 4.64 in 2002 to 57.99 in 2015. Correspondingly, the value of emergy-based sustainability index decreased from 11.25 in 2002 to 2.83 in 2015. These results indicate that Qinghai was highly dependent on local resources and its sustainability experienced a declining trend. In addition, the high absolute value of emergy to money ratio indicates that Qinghai was a net loser for its domestic and international trade. Sensitivity analysis was also conducted to test the reliability of these results. Finally, policy recommendations based on such a systematic evaluation and local realities were proposed to improve its sustainable development.