Author(s)

S. Mingshan, P. Shuihong, Z. Xiusheng & H. Jiankun

Abstract

Regional sustainable development issues, such as sustainable city development and environmental rehabilitation, are complicated management issues. The integrated resource management approach and its related technologies can be applied to these issues. Computational model based planning is required in the institutional design, such as establishment of a tradable water rights system, when an integrated management approach is applied. Computational model based planning is applied to environmental rehabilitation in Tarim valley for integrated resource management. Tarim valley is situated in the south of Xinjiang Autonomous Region in China. A tradable water rights system could be one of the institutional reform schemes for water resource management. But simulation results show that it is necessary to integrate a tradable grass quota system into the institutional design. To analyze the economic impact of tradable water rights and a tradable grass quota system, a joint multi-product water rights and grass quota trade model with transaction cost is developed. The model integrates ecological improvement and agricultural activities into a system. The variational inequality approach is applied to transform the game-theory models into computational models. The results of model simulation show that a joint tradable water rights and grass quota system will encourage participates to conserve the water and grass resources at the same time. The study also shows that a computational model based planning approach could provide both qualitative and quantitative results for sustainable region planning.

Keywords