CHEN Li-ding, FU Bo-jie
The Yangtze River basin covers about 1.8 million km2, taking about 15.5% of total area of China, and about nine main administration regions are situated in this region.It goes through the central China from west to east.Since its rich land resource and water power resource, it plays a significant role in China’s national sustainable development.The population within the major nine administration regions in 1997 is about 0.47 billion, the gross national product reaches 3?017 billion yuan(RMB) and the total grain yield is about 199 billion kg.They are respectively 38.4%, 39.2%, 40.3% of the total amount of China in 1997.However, due to natural eco environmental difference among the lower, the middle and the upper parts of the Yangtze River basin, much difference on social, economic, cultural aspect is still remained for different administration regions.Thus, some practical difficulties are faced to realize sustainable development for the whole basin.In this study, based on analyzing the characteristics of sustainable development and concept, a reasonable approach and index for assessing sustainability based on society, economy, technology, resource and ecological conservation was proposed.From the real meaning of sustainable development, the authors take the viewpoint that the sustainable development can be considered as a process or re lay competition between different generations.Normally, when the present generation leave enough resource, or capital for the next generation, the social and economic development process will be sustainable.Otherwise it will be unsustainable or destructive if the present generation consume much resource and leave less for the next generation.Therefore, the evaluation indices for sustainability of a region comprises of seven aspects:man made capital accumulation, human resource capacity, scientific and technological resource supporting ability, natural resource supporting ability, environmental capacity and supporting ability, population pressure and social development administration level.Based on the above evaluation indices, a case study focusing on assessing sustainability from natural and economic aspects was carried out in the Yangtze River basin.The results indicate that since the 1990s, the man made accumulation capacity, human resource capacity, scientific and technological supporting ability in all the administration regions in the Yangtze River basin are in a sustainable growth, however the increase rate is quite different for different regions.In general, the supporting capacity of natural resource for sustainable development is gradually decreased and the population pressure is becoming higher since the 1990s.The supporting ability of environmental resource for sustainable development is changeable for different regions in the Yangtze River basin.Based on the above results, some basic measures for enhancing the sustainability of whole Yangtze River basin are suggested.The most importance is that while enhancing sustainability for individual administration regions, strengthening the cooperation between different administration regions and different departments on optimism utilization of the common resource in the Yangtze River basin will be imperative.