Evaluation of ecological civilization construction level of national ecological civilization construction demonstration zones in the Yangtze River Economic Belt

In order to study the ecological civilization construction level of the first batch of national ecological civilization construction demonstration zones (NECCDZs) in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and to provide guidance for future ecological civilization construction work, six key indicators in ecological environment, economic and social aspects were selected to analyze the temporal and spatial trends of the development of NECCDZs. The results showed that all the 6 indicators could basically achieve steady improvement in each NECCDZ. By 2019, the number of NECCDZs whose indicator values were better than the average indicator value of the corresponding province (city) accounted for 81.25%, 87.50%, 87.50%, 68.75%, 90.91%, 56.25%, respectively. The ecological environment, economy and society coordination model was established to divide the 16 NECCDZs in the Yangtze River Economic Zone into four types. Then, the ecological environment, economic and social coordinated development status of the NECCDZs in 2017 and 2019, as well as the problems of focusing on improvement of the ecological environmental quality while the socio-economic development was slow, or focusing on the socio-economic improvement while the improvement of the ecological environment slowed down, were analyzed. The results showed that the coordinated development of ecological environment, economy and society in most NECCDZs had improved in some degree. By 2019, 31.25% of the 16 NECCDZs had a high degree of harmonious development, 17.65% of them had a lower ecological environment, economic and social development, while 51.10% only focused on one aspect, with low development coordination of ecological environment, economy and society.