Industrial Structure Change and Its Eco-environmental Influence since the Establishment of Municipality in Chongqing, China

The change of regional industrial structure best reflects the transformation of resource utilization in human society, and also results in a visible alteration of its eco-environmental effect. It is a significant content for regional sustainability development and man-land relationship research to explore the eco-environmental effect of regional industrial structure change. The eco-environmental influence produced by nine-industry subclasses' development was analyzed, and at the same time, the historical trace of industrial structure development in Chongqing after municipality establishing was reviewed briefly. Making use of eco-environmental influence modulus of industrial departments (EIMID), we quantitatively evaluated the entire eco-environmental impact of industrial structure change in Chongqing from 1997 to 2008 by integrated eco-environmental influence modulus of industrial structure (IEIMIS). Our research showed that the industrial structure had experienced two significant transformations since the establishment of municipality in 1997 and that IEIMIS presented an approximate U-shaped curve with an ascent trend after an initial decline and fluctuated in a certain range. From 1997 to 2001 the economic development was rather sustainable in Chongqing, but from 2002 to 2008, the social development was at the expensive of eco-environment deterioration and the industrial structure change intensified human activity's pressure on local environment. It was concluded that as the youngest municipality and the city still in industrialization increasing stage in China, Chongqing faced an arduous task of industry upgrading and optimizing. Developing circular economy and eco-industry and implementing cleaner production methods would be the optimum choice for its future development. Sufficient attentions of the supervision mechanism of environmental protection also should be given. (C) 2010Published by Elsevier Ltd.