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Assessment of Ecological Efficiency and Environmental Sustainability Of sustainability Article Assessment of Ecological Efficiency and Environmental Sustainability of the Minjiang-Source in China Junlong Li 1, Chuangneng Cai 2,* and Feng Zhang 3 1 School of Economics and Management & Research Center of Low Carbon Economy, Sanming University, Sanming 365004, China; [email protected] 2 Business School, Shantou University, Shantou 515063, China 3 State Key Laboratory of Grassland Agro-ecosystems, Institute of Arid Agroecology, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +86-0754-8650-3642 Received: 21 April 2020; Accepted: 8 June 2020; Published: 11 June 2020 Abstract: Ecological sustainability is treated as a main reflection of the synergy among social development, economic growth and environmental protection, while ecological efficiency is an index used to reflect the sustainable development of the ecological environment. The super efficiency model with undesirable outputs (SE-SBM) model was applied to measure the eco-efficiency of the 12 counties in the Minjiang-Source, China, in 2005–2017. The spatial and temporal evolution and spatial differentiation of the eco-efficiency were analyzed. The results showed that the eco-efficiency of 67.7% of the 12 counties remains at a low level but with an increasing trend. A typical spatial aggregation effect was found with the characteristics of “high in the east and low in the west”. The Malmquist-Luenberger index shows a trend of fluctuation with the same trend between scale efficiency and technical efficiency changes. The results proved the positive effect of technological progress on local eco-efficiency. Environmental regulation has a positive impact on eco-efficiency in the short term and an inhibition effect in the long run. Hence, technological innovation and industrial adjustment will be an effective way to improve the eco-efficiency of the Minjiang-Source and promote its sustainability. Keywords: eco-efficiency; SE-SBM model; sustainability assessment; key ecological functional areas; Minjiang-Source 1. Introduction For ages, society has made great efforts towards economic development while consuming too many natural resources, bringing severe pollution problems. Due to natural resource constraint, the world, especially China, is facing a lot of environmental and ecological problems, such as air pollution and ecological damage. To overcome these problems, the Chinese government has taken a lot of measures, such as laws like the Pollution Prevention Act and the Environmental Protection Act, measures like cleaner production and a recycling economy, and systems like the environmental protection administrative system of interviews. It has experienced a great evolution, both in practice and theory, from an administrative management-based approach to an economic instruments-based approach, from environmental protection to sustainable development, and from pollution control to ecological conservation [1]. A vast work has been addressed towards awareness of ecological conservation. Meanwhile, the Chinese government also chose some areas as the key ecological functional ones to undertake the ecological functions of ecological guarantee, resource reserve and landscape construction. Key ecological functional areas are areas with extremely important ecosystems and are closely related Sustainability 2020, 12, 4783; doi:10.3390/su12114783 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Sustainability 2020, 12, 4783 2 of 15 to the ecological security of the country or a wide range of regions. However, these areas have been deteriorating, and there is need to limit large-scale and high-strength development of urbanization and industrialization in the nation to maintain and improve the supply capacity of ecological products [2]. For a long time, the key ecological functional areas have been troubled by the difficulty in coordinating ecological environment protection and regional economic development, as well as by the severe challenges of resource demand pressure and ecological environment destruction [3,4]. How to optimally explore ecological benefits on the premise of minimum resource consumption and environmental investment has become a key issue to promote the construction of ecological civilization in the key ecological functional areas in China at the present stage. With the continuous advance in ecological civilization construction and the proposition of the coordinated concept of social development, economic growth and ecological environment protection, it is urgent to guide the sustainable development of both the social economy and ecological environment in the key ecological functional areas in China. Ecological efficiency (Eco-efficiency) is a representational index that reflects the coordinated development of regional social development, economic growth and ecological environment [5,6]. Through embedding ecological consumption of resources into the traditional input-output accounting [7,8], eco-efficiency has become an important tool for regional sustainability assessment. Extant studies on regional eco-efficiency assessment mainly focus on the evaluation of large-scale regions, such as the national level [9–11], trans-regional level [12,13] and provincial level [14,15]. However, there are few studies on regions at the county level, especially on the evaluation of eco-efficiency in key ecological functional areas. Evaluation of ecological benefit is the basis and focus of ecological benefit research. With regards to the selection of an eco-efficiency evaluation index, most studies choose environmental pollution and resource consumption as input indicators, and regional production indicators as output indicators [16,17]. For example, the discharge of waste water, waste gas and waste solid are used as inputs in efficiency evaluation, which is not consistent with the actual situation [18,19]. In the evaluation of regional eco-efficiency, the indexes should be expanded or adjusted appropriately according to the differentiation in the connotation of the research objects [20]. Therefore, the establishment of a scientific and reasonable evaluation model and a scientific index system in typical regions is crucial to the measurement of eco-efficiency and the assessment of sustainability. Although the existing studies provide a good theoretical basis for the present study, there is a lack of evaluation of eco-efficiency at the meso-level, and few studies on the evaluation of the key ecological functional areas. The key ecological functional areas are greatly restricted by the ecological environmental protection system and have great differences in eco-efficiency evaluations compared to those at a larger scale area or macro level. Based on this, this study applies the undesirable output of super efficiency (Super-SBM) model and the undesirable output model of total factor productivity index (ML) in Minjiang-Source to empirically analyze the temporal and spatial evolution of eco-efficiency and the factors influencing it. The results provide reference for the sustainable development of key ecological function areas and provide scientific basis for local policy making. 2. Study Area, Indicators and Data 2.1. Study Area Minjiang-Source is a key ecological functional area in Fujian province, China. The area is located in the northwest of Fujian province, within the jurisdiction of two districts, one city and nine counties, and a total area of 22,900 square kilometers (See Figure1). There are six provincial-level and five national-level nature reserves, covering a total area of 85,800 hectares, accounting for 3.7% of the land area. There are three national-level and four provincial-level scenic spots, with a total area of 27,200 hectares, accounting for 1.18% of the land area. In 2017, the regional GDP reached 210.26 billion Chinese yuan (RMB), the per capita GDP was 83,000 RMB, the per capita public revenue was 5700 RMB, Sustainability 2020, 12, 4783 3 of 15 Sustainability 2020, 12, x FOR PEER REVIEW 3 of 18 the per capitaRMB, disposable the per capita income disposabl ofe rural income residents of rural residents was 15,000 was RMB,15,000 RMB, and theand perthe per capita capita disposable income of urbandisposable residents income of was urban 32,000 residents RMB. was 32,000 RMB. FigureFigure 1. Geographic 1. Geographic location location of of Minjiang Minjiang-Source.-Source. 2.2. Indicators2.2. Indicators and Data and Data 2.2.1. Selection2.2.1. Selection of Evaluation of Evaluation Indicators Indicators Eco-efficiency refers to the ratio of the value obtained from regional economic activities and their Eco-efficiency refers to the ratio of the value obtained from regional economic activities and their negative impact on the environment to the actual resource inputs [21]. Based on the evaluation index negative impactof eco-efficiency on the from environment previous studies, to the construction actual resource land, water inputs consumpti [21].on, Basedlabor force, on energy the evaluation index of eco-eand cropfficiency planting from area previouswere selected studies, as input constructionindexes according land, to the water characteristics consumption, of Minjiang labor- force, energy andSource crop and planting data availability. area were Of these selected, construction as input land indexes is represented according by the urban to the construction characteristics of area, water consumption is represented by water consumption of industrial enterprises above Minjiang-Source and data availability. Of these, construction land is represented
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