Using Systems Thinking and Modelling: Ecological Land Utilisation Efficiency in the Yangtze Delta in China

Abstract

Ecological land has two definitions: the broad category and the narrow category. This paper studied the narrow category, which refers to the land whose main purpose is to provide ecological services, such as environmental regulation and biological conservation. Ecological land areas are likely to decrease with the development of urbanisation all over the world, which poses potential risks to the environment, society, and public health, and low utilisation efficiency of ecological land will exacerbate this risk. Based on the actual input–output situation of ecological land utilisation, we constructed an index system in the Yangtze Delta to measure the ecological land utilisation efficiency with a Slack-Based Model (SBM) in the data envelopment analysis (DEA). The results revealed that the comprehensive efficiency exhibited an increasing trend from 2012 to 2020, and more high-efficiency cities appeared in the areas closer to Shanghai. Both the technical efficiency and scale efficiency increased over the research period. The technical efficiencies in most cities were efficient and equal to the scale efficiencies. Among the remaining cities, the technical efficiencies and scale efficiencies were inefficient and not synchronous. In addition, we found that the that poor efficiencies of some cities can mainly be attributed to low-technology, an unsuited-scale, or a combination of these. In the future, improvement should be focused on the economical and intensive use of ecological land, technical innovations, and the optimal scale. The present results can provide references for making scientific decisions regarding the efficient utilisation of ecological land in the Yangtze Delta and other similar rapid-urbanization areas.