Relationship between environmental pressure and economic growth is a long debated topic. Environmental protection and economic development are two aspects of the unity of opposites. Environment offers material basis for survival and development of human, but human activities and economic development has brought pollution and damage to the ecology and environment. This problem is more severe in Shiyang River Basin which has slow economy relatively, eco-environment is instable, and contradictions are more prominent between environmental pressures and economic growth. This paper choosed the ecological footprint as indicators of environmental pressure, and calculated the Ecological Footprint (EF), Ecological Capacity (EC) and Ecological Deficit (ED) from 1978 to 2012 of Minqin County. Then, we used STIRPAT model to simulate the impact of per capita ecological footprint on economic development. And we use ridge regression and PLS regression to find out the coupling and coordinative characteristics between economic growth and environment. The results show that: ①Ecological footprint and per capita ecological footprint of Minqin County increased from 1978 to 2012, and ecological deficit becomes serious gradually that it has increased 719.62% in the past 31 years; ② The changes of per capita GDP and per capita GDP squared have influence on environment, and followed by urbanization level. The changes of population and grassland utilization intensity have little impact on environment. The increase of proportion of primary industry can mitigate environment change; ③ The degree range of coupling and coordinative is 0.2759~0.4987 and 0.1263~0.3090. The economic development is extensive growth. And it has a negative effect on environment change.