Abstract

There are series of problems occurring alternately and continuing to increase, such as global temperatures rising sharply, the ecological environment worsening, energy resource increasingly drying up, natural disasters occurring frequently and extreme weather appearing again and again. All of them have already become the bottleneck of sustainable development of the economic society and directly threat to human survival and development. WWF have released The Earth Vitality Report 2012, which have pointed out that with the growth of the population, human demands for resources have being increasing, which have brought a huge pressure to the earth's biological diversity. Diversity in the earth has fallen by 28% since 1970 and the tropical zones have dropped by 60%. In fact, although all the causes of ecological crisis are not the same, fundamentally, they all have common features, that is, the improper overall configuration of capital. In the past 100 years, a lot of capital has been focused on real estate, fossil fuels and structured financial assets and its embedded derivatives. By contrast, only a tiny capital has been invested in renewable energy, ecosystems and biodiversity protection, and water and soil conservation, etc.

To further implement the scientific outlook on development, our country adjusts the industrial structures, transforms the development mode, walks a road of resource conservation and environment friendly development, and successively formulates and implements a series of major strategic measures, such as environmental protection, recycling economy development, the construction of ecological province（city）, land development plan, the low carbon economy pilot and ecological economic zone construction. Then, ecological environment construction investment increases year by year, and ecology capitalization and capital ecological become the direction and trend of ecological environment construction. Eco logical capital investment is rapidly becoming an effective mode of ecological economic sustainable development. However, relatively to the vigorous development of ecological capital investment practice, the theoretical research of ecological capital investment obviously lags, especially the studies on the return of ecological capital investment. This is both a strategic node of speeding up the ecological transformation of the economic development pattern and a practical problem to break the current dilemma of economic development and environmental protection. It has importantly theoretical and practical meaning.

This book uses ecological capital investment as the subject, relying on the national natural science fund project, Research On the Ecological Capital Operation Mechanism and Management Mode（Item number: 70873135）, adopting literature research combines with social investigation, comprehensive induction combines with case comparison and game, property rights, etc. It uses the concept definition of ecological capital and the return of its investment as the logical starting point, ecological capital theory, value investment theory, and production theory as the theoretical basis, the prototype exploration of ecological capital investment as practice basis. It aims to through the analysis of the value of ecological capital investment to explore the formation mechanism, influencing factors and institutional innovation of the return of ecological capital investment. This book implements empirical test of the return of ecological capital investment with China's data to scientifically position value orientation of ecological capital investment, and standard its way and intensity. It will provide theoretical basis and decision-making reference to promote green prosperity and build beautiful China. The research contents and chapters'structure arrangement of this book are as follows：

Introduction It describes the background of selected topic and theoretical and practical meaning of the research, investigates the research dynamic at home and abroad to review and comment the relevant literature and research results, states thinking method and technical route of the research, and introduces the framework and possible innovation points to point out the problem which are going to be further in-depth studied.

Chapter I the core concepts and theoretical basis. It defines the core con cepts of ecological capital; ecological capital investment, the return of ecological capital investment, and so on, clarifies the theoretical basis of this study, and carries on theoretical analysis and thinking.

Chapter Ⅱ ecological capital shortage and the current status of its investment. Firstly, the chapter points out the lack of the estimation of ecological capital stock, introduces the classified estimation methods of ecological capital stock and flow. Secondly, according to the best ratio which is ecological capital relative to physical capital, it easily estimates the ecological capital shortage in our country. Thirdly, basing on the practice exploration of ecological capital investment, combining with the questionnaire survey, it analyzes the problems existing in the process of ecological capital investment in our country and points out that the realization of the investment returns is the key problem of ecological capital investment.

ChapterⅢ the value analysis of ecological capital investment. Firstly, the chapter embarks from the basic elements of ecological capital investment and points out its value composition, including ecological value, economic value and social value. Secondly, it discusses the macroscopic balancing of the ecological capital investment value by building a macroeconomic dynamic equilibrium model. Thirdly, it analyses the microstructure transformation process of the ecological capital investment value. Among them, the ecological resources capitalization is its process of value creation, the ecological property capitalization is its process of value increment, the ecological capital productization is its process of value transformation and the ecological products marketization is its process of value realization.

Chapter Ⅳ the formation mechanism of ecological capital investment. Firstly, the chapter points out that the investment value is the essence and source of investment returns, and analyses the income types of ecological capital investment from three dimensions of ecological, economic and social. Secondly, it investigates the best continuous quantity of the ecological return of ecological capital investment, and elaborates its constraint which is the ecological rules made for it. Thirdly, it discusses the promoting and optimization mechanisms which are the ecological capital investment made for economic growth basing on the three kinds of production theory. Fourthly, it carries out the yield formation mechanism analysis, such as intergenerational equity, employment, welfare return and so on.

Chapter Ⅴ the influence factors of ecological capital investment. Firstly, the chapter expounds the influence conditions of ecological capital investment. Among them, the ecological function is its cognitive condition, the ecological demand is its constraint condition, the ecological technology is its support conditions, and the ecological market is its guarantee condition. Secondly, it analyses the yield influence factors of public investment of ecological capital basing on introducing dominant public investment of ecological capital. Thirdly, it discusses the influence factors of private investment basing on the objective reality of the lack of private investment.

ChapterⅥ the system innovation of ecological capital investment. Firstly, the chapter discusses the definition of the return of ecological capital investment, starting from its property interpretation. Secondly, it introduces the design of ecological capital investment mechanism by comparing the system view of mechanism design and the natural evolution. Thirdly, it points out the institutional guarantee of the return of ecological capital investment, including ecological capital value accounting, ecological capital property right trading, ecological capital equity compensation, ecological capital investment insurance and ecological capital investment fund and so on.

Chapter Ⅶ the empirical test of the return of ecological capital investment. Firstly, the chapter uses statistics in China to examine ecological return, economic return and social return of ecological capital investment. Secondly, on the basis of measuring ecological capital efficiency, it carries out the Tobit regression analysis of ecological capital investment to ecological capital efficiency. Thirdly, in view of the area overflowing, it carries out the spatial econometric analysis of the overflow of the return of ecological capital investment.

Research conclusions and policy recommendations It expounds the former basic conclusions, gives policy suggestions, and discusses the further research direction and key contents.

The possible innovation points of the research mainly manifest in the follow ing aspects：

Firstly, from the “ecological capital investment”perspective, ecological construction and environmental protection are not negative, but proactive investment behavior. Ecological capital investment is the behavior which makes the ecological resources become more abundant, and ultimately increases the ecological capital stock through the construction of ecological restoration, environmental pollution control, eco-technology research and development activities. This book combines the ecological capital theory and the capital investment theory, could trigger a revolution in capital structure and capital investment. This is perhaps a practical and theoretical innovation.

Secondly, in the “ecology-economy-society”compound system, ecological environment will no longer be “natural”, but “artificial”, in most cases, the ecological capital is essentially man-made ecological capital. Since the value accounting of ecological capital is difficult, this book mainly adjusts ecological capital investment earnings basing on the “eco-socio-economic”value. It unity the ecological, economic and social return of ecological capital investment, the research is holistic and systemic.

Thirdly, this book discusses the macroscopic balancing of the ecological capital investment value by building a macroeconomic dynamic equilibrium model basing on the value of ecological capital investment. And points out the microstructure transformation process of the ecological capital investment value, among them, the ecological resources capitalization is its process of value creation and the ecological property capitalization is its process of value increment and the ecological capital productization is its process of value transformation and the ecological products marketization is its process of value realization. This is perhaps a theoretical innovation.

Fourthly, this book discusses the definition of the returns of ecological capital investment, starting from its property interpretation. It points out the institutional guarantee of the returns of ecological capital investment, including ecological capital value accounting, ecological capital property right management, ecological capital equity compensation, ecological capital investment insurance and ecological capital investment fund and so on. This can achieve a virtuous circle of ecological capital investment.

Fifthly, in the empirical test of the return of ecological capital investment, this book uses statistics in China to examine ecological return, economic return and social return of ecological capital investment. On the basis of measuring ecological capital efficiency, it carries out the Tobit regression analysis of ecological capital investment to ecological capital efficiency. In view of the area overflowing, it carries out the spatial econometric analysis of the overflow of the return of ecological capital investment. This is perhaps a theoretical innovation.

Although this book has some innovation, there are still some limitations which need to be studied further: Firstly, this book places more weight on qualitative analysis than quantitative analysis. Some issues need to be strengthened through quantitative analysis in the following study, such as the relationship between ecological capital investment and the return of ecological capital investment; this book does not do a detailed discussion on the issues, which also need to be improved. Secondly, since the practice of current domestic and international ecological capital investment is still in the exploratory stage and lacking maturity reference model, which cause difficulty on collecting data such as ecological construction and environmental investment data. This book selects some variables to refer to ecological capital investment, which make the findings of this book are more subjective. Thirdly, this book uses the advanced macroeconomics analysis methods, discusses the macroscopic balancing of the ecological capital investment value by building a macroeconomic dynamic equilibrium model. However, for some issues such as influencing factors of the return of ecological capital investment, it only reduces to some parameters or assumptions, which are the limitation needed to be studied further.

 

Key words: Ecological Capital; Investment Value; Investment Return