Dynamic evaluation of the ecological civilization of Jiangxi Province: GIS and AHP approaches

PLoS One. 2022 Aug 4;17(8):e0271768. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0271768. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Faced with the increasingly severe ecological environment, China promotes the construction of ecological civilization vigorously. Therefore, it is of great significance to adopt scientific, effective and comprehensive methods to evaluate development status of ecological civilization. Based on the panel data from 2010 to 2014, this paper employs GIS and AHP methods to dynamically examine the level of ecological civilization construction in Jiangxi Province. The results indicate that: (1) The ecological civilization construction in Jiangxi Province is 13.23% higher than the national average, whereas there is an imbalance in the development of different cities within the province; (2) The ecological civilization construction in the whole province rises first and then falls; (3) The performances of the cities vary in different dimensions of the construction of ecological civilization that cities in Jiangxi province perform well in the dimension of ecological environment, but perform poorly in the dimension of social development. Finally, we put forward policy recommendations for improving ecological environment to realize harmonious development between human and nature.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • China
  • Cities
  • Civilization*
  • Conservation of Natural Resources
  • Ecosystem
  • Environment
  • Geographic Information Systems*
  • Humans

Grants and funding

This study is supported by the Humanities and Social Science Fund of Ministry of Education of China (No.21YJC790098), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (No.71991482) and Postdoctoral Research Foundation of China (No.2021M703012).