Measuring regional sustainability with an integrated social-economic-natural approach: a case study of the Yellow River Delta region of China.

This paper presents a social-economic-natural approach to measure regional sustainability in the Yellow River Delta region of China based on emergy theory. In this study, Dongying, as the core city of the Yellow River Delta High-efficient Eco-Economic Zone (YRDHEZ) in China, was chosen as the study area. The reason we chose this city is because of its fast economic growth, quick urbanization, and rich natural capital. Using GIS technology, we assessed the emergy of the study area in the year 2009 with consideration of natural capitals. Compared with many previous emergy studies on the urban and regional levels, the natural capital especially the Net Primary Production (NPP) of the ecosystem were included rather than only assessing the natural capitals based on statistical data of agriculture products. The results showed that total emergy used (U) of Dongying was 1.14E+23 solar emergy joule (sej) in 2009. While the emergy value of NPP was 1.95E+22 sej accounting for 60% of Indigenous renewable production (R 1 ). A series of indices based on emergy flows of Dongying were also calculated. The Emergy Sustainable Index (ESI) of Dongying was 0.79 in 2009 which was higher than several other cities from previous studies. However, the biggest proportion among all used sources was the nonrenewable source (N) which indicated that its economic development relied heavily on the consumption of N. The results of this study may provide a reference standard for measuring regional sustainability and also provide policy makers with a reference for adjusting regional developing policies with systematic consideration of the social-economic-natural complex system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]