Wu, Shuang, Abramson, Daniel B., & Zhong, Bo. (2022). Digital Governance in Rural Chengdu, China: Its Potential for Social-ecological Resilience. Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, 4.
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Abstract
In this study, we echo the call from the UN to interpret Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in their regional context—in this case, the linpan (wooded lot) landscape of the Chengdu Plain, in Sichuan, China, where the shocks and stresses of recent, rapid administrative-economic urbanization are testing the resilience of some of the world's most sustainably productive and long- and densely-settled agrarian environments. In recent years, fine-grained information and communications technology (ICT) governance tools in Chengdu, such as “grid management”, present opportunities to sustain and scale up the collection of data necessary to validate and refine indicators of landscape resilience, and use them to regulate development, in accordance with SDG goal 11 to enhance legislation, governance, and capacity via information gathering and sharing. ICT-based governance in combination with traditional place-based knowledge can play a critical role in ensuring the resilience of urban-rural co-development. To realize this potential, however, ICT-enabled governance needs to incorporate greater transparency and more local feedback loops and enable greater participation from older farmers and women, to inform household and community-level land-use choices and initiatives. It also needs to link regulatory functions with marketing and pricing functions so that farmers may benefit from the sustainable practices they are encouraged to adopt.
Zhong, Bo; Wu, Shuang; Sun, Geng; Wu, Ning. (2022). Farmers’ Strategies to Climate Change and Urbanization: Potential of Ecosystem-based Adaptation in Rural Chengdu, Southwest China. International Journal Of Environmental Research And Public Health, 19(2).
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Abstract
Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) is emerging as a cost-effective approach for helping people adapt to climate and non-climate changes. Nowadays, climate change and urbanization have affected agricultural systems, but it is not clear how rural communities have responded or adapted to those changes. Here, we chose two typical villages in the Chengdu Plain, southwest China, through sociological surveys on 90 local farmers with a semi-structured questionnaire, participatory observation, geospatial analysis of land use and land cover, and a literature review, to explore the local people's perception of changes or disturbances and their adaptation strategies from the perspective of EbA. The results showed that climate change and urbanization had impacted agricultural systems dramatically in the last 40 years. In two case-study sites, climate change and urbanization were perceived by most local farmers as the main drivers impacting on agricultural production, but various resource-use models containing abundant traditional knowledge or practices as well as modern tools, such as information communication technology (ICT), were applied to adapt to these changes. Moreover, culture service through the adaptive decoration of rural landscapes is becoming a new perspective for implementing an EbA strategy. Finally, our findings highlighted the potential value of an EbA strategy for sustaining urban-rural integrated development and enhancing the resilience of agricultural systems.
Keywords
Ecosystem-based Adaptation (eba); Chengdu Plain; Climate Change; Urbanization; Agricultural System; Traditional Knowledge Or Practice; Functioning Ecosystem; Agro-biodiversity; Resilience; Services; Diversity; Polls & Surveys; Spatial Analysis; Topography; Rural Communities; Biodiversity; Questionnaires; Adaptation; International Organizations; Land Use; Climate Change Adaptation; Canals; Irrigation; Land Cover; Ecosystems; Case Studies; Literature Reviews; Agriculture; Farmers; Environmental Economics; Sustainable Development; Rural Areas; Gross Domestic Product--gdp; Agricultural Production; Urban Areas; Cultural Heritage; China