Regional ecological security assessment on Central Asia based on ecological footprint analysis
基于生态足迹的中亚区域生态安全评价

The world natural resources have been depleted both on quantity and types with the increase of population and economic development in recent decades and the regional ecological security problem is getting more and more serious. Central Asia is not only the neighboring region of China, but also has the similar climate characteristics, physical geographic settings and even the same ecological environmental problems of the arid zone of north easternpart of China. Both countries belong to ecological environment's fragile region in the world. In this paper, four different regions of Central Asia's per capita and regional total ecological footprint, ecological capacity, ecological deficit and ecological footprint pressure index (EFPI) were calculated and analyzed based on the concept and method of ecological footprint. And according to EFPI, the assessment on the ecological security of different regions in Central Asia was made. The analytical results showed that :1) the mean ecological deficit of Kirghizstan from 1992 to 2005 is 0.0900 ha/capita and mean EFPI is 0.9388, on the slightly unsafe ecological status.2) The long period mean ecological deficit and EFPI of Turkmenistan and Kazakstan are 0.3303 ha/capita, 0.8379 and 1.1327 ha/capita , 1.2320 respectively, with both regions on the relatively unsafe ecological status.3)The regional total ecological capacity of Ozbekstan decreased from 28807119 ha in 1992 to 28527138 ha in 2005,and total regional ecological footprint presented an increasing trend; the mean EFPI is 1.7540,on the unsafe ecological status. Based on the calculation results, Kirghizstan's ecological environment is relatively good compared with other regions in Central Asia, followed by Turkmenistan and Kazakstan, and the last one is Ozbekstan. In a word, all these four central Asia nations are in the unsafe ecological environment condition, only the unsafe degrees are different. This study results would have academic value for the comparative analysis of the ecological security or sustainable development assessment of other arid and semi-arid regions in China or in the world.