EVALUATION OF NATURAL CAPITAL UTILIZATION WITH ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN CHINA
中国的生态空间占用研究

Ecological footprint is a useful indicator for measuring the pressure imposed by human on natural capital and offering real bio capacity within given region or country. This method tracks natural resources consumption of a nation or a region and translates them into biologically productive area, which is required to produce the resources and to assimilate the wastes. It is also a powerful indicator for regional sustainability. With ecological footprint method, the current situation of natural resources utilization in China is assessed in this paper. The results show that, the ecological footprint demand per capita in China is 1 848hm 2 and there exists 0 65hm 2 biological productive space for per capita to use. Obviously, China has 1 198 hm 2 ecological deficit per capita.