Eco-economic evolution, emergy evaluation and policy options for the sustainable development of Tibet

As economies and ecological support systems become more interdependent, new disciplines are needed to "bridge the gap" of understanding between societies and nature. It is now clear that neither ecology nor economics alone can address the problems of our global commons. New measures of wealth, of value, of contributions and production are needed that acknowledge the "natural capital" and "ecosystem services" provided from healthy environments. A new interface is now being recognized termed "eco-economics". It is an ambitious and necessary attempt to understand the affairs of humanity and nature as a single, interdependent system. New tools are being invested to measure wealth. services and production fairly and equitably. In this report we use systems analysis approach to study the combined ecological-economic system of Tibet We use an alternative measure of value, based on real contributions to system performance, termed EMERGY, spelt with an "M". It is an accounting unit of total contributions, direct and indirect. used in generating a product or service. It is a concept derived from understanding whole systems, their interactions and interdependence, and the resources driving and maintaining them. This broader approach will help us to investigate Tibetan resources utilization and potentialities and exchange. Emergy analysis allows comparison and incroporation of environmental costs and benefits with variables of traditional economic costs and benefits to provide a more comprehensive perspective for public policy directives. Through this research, we think: 1) China has made a great effort in making Tibet develop from a closed regional system to a more and more opened regional system which is very important to the sustainable development of Tibet. 2) The increase of economic development and population growth has a close relationship with the total emergy storage and use in transportation. Education in modern science and technology increased the shared emergy of Tibetans to modern science and technology and stimulated the process of matching material and energy imports from outside with local resources. 3) There is great potential to develop hydropower and geothermal reserves that may stimulate not only economic development but also the better use of environment. 4) The better trained population can increase the empower of Tibet eco-economic system. Future development needs all kinds of talent exchanges with the outside system to develop education. 3) Compared with the Tibet economic system, Taiwan economic system is much more competitive. GNP and emergy use are very useful functions for comparing the competitive power of different ecological economic systems.