Abstract: The coordinated development of the economic and ecological environment has become a huge challenge in the current management of desertification. How to quantitatively analyze the impact of human activities and natural conditions on the environment has become a hot issue in the current research of environmental economics, and it is also a problem to be studied in this paper. This paper uses a panel spatial econometric model for empirical analysis in 71 desertification counties in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region over the period 1986-2010. We select the number of agricultural labor, capita GDP, technological level,wind speed, and precipitation as the basic indicators of environment to build the STIRPAT model. The comprehensive impact of different natural factors and human factors on the environmental pressure in desertification areas was quantitatively analyzed from the point of internal driving force of environmental pressure. The study shows that capita GDP, technological level, wind speed and precipitation are the main drivers of environmental pressure in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region within the scope of observational data; As the degree of affluence increased by 1%, the environmental pressure increased significantly by 0.096%, and each change of 1% of the technical level would lead to a 0.084% change in the environmental pressure.The each change of 1% of wind speed and precipitation will respectively lead to a significant increase of 0.640% and reduce by 0.216% of the environmental pressure in desert areas.

Key words: environmental pressure, driving force, desertification, IPAT model