Research and application of GEP------China's experience in natural
capital accounting---a review
Abstract
Under the background of global climate change and the human activities,
the stock of natural capital and the the ability of ecosystem services
are facing increasing pressure, and the contradiction between natural
capital protection and people’s livelihood development is also
increasing. Therefore, it is urgent to integrate ecosystem value
estimation into the development decision-making of countries all over
the world. As a new ecosystem research method, ecosystem gross product
(GEP) accounting is widely used in China, and often used to reflect the
effectiveness of regional ecological protection and the coordination
relationship between development and protection. We found that : (1) GEP
accounting can reflect the overall situation of ecological environment
and service quality, and help decision-makers and managers formulate and
implement sustainable development strategies and ecological protection
policies. (2) The contradiction between the depletion of global
ecosystem capital and the development of people’s livelihood continues
to intensify. About 68.7% of developing countries facing “low-low
development model” (low GEP and low GDP). (3) We have constructed the
path model of GEP working system and the path model of ecological
protection compensation mechanism in China. The GEP accounting system of
“from point to area, from top to bottom”, the parallel evaluation
strategy of GDP and GEP and the comprehensive ecological compensation
system of “vertical and horizontal combination” implemented can be
popularized to countries all over the world.