خلاصة:
The current study aim is to introduce, analyze and examine the possibility of forecasting these indices in Iranian economy. To get the objective, time series data for 1980-2015 were applied. The introduced indices for natural capital are ecological footprint, biological capacity, ecological tension, ecological occupancy, and ecological-economic coordination. The findings showed that ecological footprint as the main index has experienced an annual growth of 2 percent. In terms of the contribution, carbon dioxide accounts for the most part of the ecological footprint growth. On the other hand, biological capacity showed a decreasing trend over the study horizon such that it has been exceeded by ecological footprint, giving rise to an ecological deficit. The ecological tension index showed that services demanded from the environment have exceeded its capacity as well as those of the global average, leading to ecological insecurity. The forecasting results also indicated a higher forecasting ability for neural network model compared to the ARMA one, providing forecasts with errors of as low as less than 3 percent for the most of the indices.
ملخص الجهاز:
Additionally, the ecological tension index showed that the total services received from nature and the environment were beyond its capacity and higher than the global average, leading to an increase in ecological insecurity.
The occupancy index is based on comparing the ecological footprint of each region with the global average, and the ratio of the tension index to the occupancy index shows the overall state of the environment in terms of security, which is known as the "ecological-economic coordination" index.
To calculate the ecological footprint, it is necessary to convert the net consumption of agricultural products, rangelands, aquatic resources, forest wood, land consumption for housing and urban services, as well as fossil fuel consumption (which indicates pollution emissions), into standardized areas in terms of the global hectare index using equivalence and yield factors.
To calculate the ecological capacity, the area of agricultural lands, rangelands, fishing areas, forests, residential areas, natural energy accumulation areas, or pollution absorption areas is calculated in hectares and then converted into standardized areas in terms of the global hectare index using equivalence and yield factors.
Therefore, in this study, after calculating the ecological footprint index and the ecological capacity based on their components, the forecasting capability of ARMA models and artificial neural networks was evaluated.
(Refer to page image) Figure 10- Ecological security of Iran in the period of 1359-1394 Fig. 10- Ecological security of Iran in the period of 1980-2015 Forecasting Indices In the following, the findings obtained from forecasting the indices used for natural capital, including ecological footprint, ecological capacity, ecological tension, ecological appropriation, and ecological-economic coordination, are presented.
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