Evolutionary assessment of the ecological governance under the metropolitan background: Evidence from Chongming Eco-Island, Shanghai, China

Abstract

Just as its general theoretical foundation does, the quantitative evaluation of ecological governance does not have a sound research compilation. This study aims to construct the ecological governance evaluation model and determine the indicator weights, premised on quantitative methods. The evaluation model is expected to embody the new features of the contemporary ecological governance, especially the metropolitan background and regional functions. Given the previous studies and conceptualizations, it is proposed based on (1) fundamental socio-economic development, (2) ecological environment quality, (3) ecological governance and innovation, and (4) regional interconnected functions. The model covers multiple index layers and various indicators, and the entropy weight method is applied to obtain the weights. The results of the specific case in Chongming show the indicator of the number of beds for old-age nursing homes in urban and rural areas, the area of real afforestation, the number of approvals in the project environmental assessment and the freight volume have the biggest weights in each of the four aspects respectively. The level of ecological governance in Chongming Island has been continuously improving, especially in 2015 and 2016, with increases doubling or tripling those of the previous two years. The index values of the four aspects generally showed an upward trend. The comprehensive social economic level and the regional interconnected level continue to grow. The levels of ecological environment quality and the ecological governance and innovation fluctuated in 2013 and 2014, but returned to growth in 2015, and increased significantly in 2016.