Tianjin ranks 7th on eco-efficiency

By Xie Fang (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-08-18 11:51

Tianjin has been ranked seventh with its advanced economy -- high GDP per capita in spite of high ecological footprint -- among provinces and regions according to their eco-efficiency, the China Economic Weekly revealed.

Beijing ranked first with its highest eco-efficiency and environment friendly economic development -- high GDP per capita and low ecological footprint, with Shanghai and Guangzhou following. The detailed ranking can be seen in the following figure, which took 10000 yuan energy as the total consumption amount.

The project on new regional coordination development and policy has studied the status quo of the eco-efficiency in all provinces and regions but the Tibet autonomous region.

The survey mainly took six indices into consideration -- GDP and popularity scale; GDP per capita and labor productivity; the percentage of the service industry in GDP; urbanization; energy consumption in economic activities, which is in negative correlation with eco-efficiency; the ecological footprint per capita, the amount of biologically productive land and sea area needed to regenerate the resources a human population consumes and to absorb and render harmless the corresponding waste.

Among them, the first and the last indices have proved to have no significant correlation with the eco-efficiency.

It’s the first time provinces and regions have been ranked according to their eco-efficiency since the Chinese Communist Party affirmed the construction of eco-civilization at the 17th Party Congress in late 2007.

The term eco-efficiency was coined by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) in its 1992 publication "Changing Course".

It is based on the concept of creating more goods and services while using fewer resources and creating less waste and pollution.