Assessment of Ecological Assets for Sustainable Regional Development: A Case Study of Deqing County, China

Sustainable development has become a main concern of governments at a variety of levels. Assessing ecological assets, which is significant for the sustainability of human society, plays an important role in measuring the performance of local governments. Using Deqing County in Zhejiang Province as a case study, this paper adapts a county-level indicator assessment of ecological assets and quantifies these indicators using high-resolution data sets. The resulting value of ecological assets in Deqing County accounts for 24.85% of its GDP, which is much higher than other published case studies across China. Through contrasting per capita valuation of ecological assets and per capita enterprise taxation at township level, this paper has classified all townships into four categories, each of which has varied implications for the local development strategy from the perspective of sustainability. This study implies that the integration of the valuation of ecological assets into the measurement of political performance at the lowest township level enables the provision of quantitative evidence to enhance sustainable development at local (county) level.