Abstract:

Poverty as a worldwide problem is very difficult to solve. Eradication of poverty is a longterm goal of Chinese people. In the past, poverty alleviation and development has always focused on economic growth, while the protection of the ecological environment has been ignored. In fact, poverty is closely related with the environment. The more fragile the environment is, the higher the poverty is. At the present stage, due to unbalanced development, scarcity of natural resources and deterioration of environment, helpthepoor work is facing greater challenges. The UN Millennium Development Goals mentioned that governments should ensure environmental sustainability, reverse the loss of environmental resources, and integrate the principles of sustainable development into national policies and programs. Sustainable development is a development strategy and new concept of development. Quantitative measurement of sustainable development is the way to make this development idea to an operable development model. In order to incorporate sustainability into specific indicators to measure whether the scope of human survival is in the ecosystem carrying capacity, ecological carrying capacity and ecological footprint method is a simple and comprehensive approach.
The ecological footprint analysis method has been widely used in the quantitative study and judging sustainable development of a country or area. And the quantitative measurement of sustainable development is a prerequisite way for the implementation of the strategy of sustainable development. Using the ecological footprint analysis method, based on the statistical data of 2010 in the poor areas of Enshi, we calculated and analyzed ecological footprint, ecological carrying capacity in 2010. We made spatial coupling between the density distribution of poverty villages in the Enshi area with ecological footprint, ecological capacity, ecological surplus and the ecological footprint of per ten thousand yuan GDP. The results showed as follows. (1) The biologically productive area utilization efficiency of the Enshi area was higher than Hubei Province. The per capita ecological surplus was 0467 hm2.The per capita ecological capacity was 0.947 1 hm2.The per capita ecological footprint was 048 hm2. The per capita ecological capacity of Enshi poverty area was much higher than the average ecological footprint. These results suggested that the environment can meet the needs of the region development for poverty alleviation very well. (2) Laifeng County and Jianshi County had the highest density of impoverished village distribution. The per capita ecological footprint here was relatively high, but the per capita ecological carrying capacity and ecological surplus were at a very low level. Badong County and Enshi had a relatively high density of impoverished village distribution. And per capita ecological surplus in Badong was higher than that in Lichuan County, Xianfeng County, Xuanen County and Hefeng County. The highest and lowest per capita ecological footprint was respectively located in Xianfeng County and Xuanen County. Ecological carrying capacity in Hefeng County was the highest. On the contrary, the lowest was in Lichuan County. Xuanen County and Hefeng County had the highest per capita ecological surplus. The highest and lowest ecological footprint of ten thousand yuan GDP was respectively in Lichuan County and Badong County. (3) Through the study of the ecological footprint, Enshi impoverished area should enlarge the ecological advantages, adjust measures to local conditions and attempt to turn ecological surplus into direct economic growth, which can help the impoverished area out of poverty effectively