An Analysis of Eco–Environmental Changes in Rural Areas in China Based on Sustainability Indicators between 2000 and 2015

Abstract

Ecological zoning and green–development assessment at the village–town scale in China are significant tasks for sustainable planning in China. In this study, we build an index system to calculate the eco–environmental vulnerability score and divide the results into extreme, heavy, moderate, light, and slight levels based on evidence from 43,046 villages and towns in China from 2000 to 2015; then, we build a sustainable–development score calculation criterion to perform sustainability assessments. The results show that nine indexes (digital elevation model (DEM), slope, net primary productivity (NPP), total rainfall per year, per capita cultivated land, farmland proportion, grassland proportion, forestland proportion, and construction–land proportion) are the main factors in the variation in eco–environmental vulnerability under the conditions of urbanization. The eco–environment is found to have worsened from 2000 to 2015, and the deterioration areas are mainly concentrated in Tibet, the eastern area of Xinjiang and the Xing’an Mountains region. Economic growth and ecological protection can achieve common development when eco–environmental vulnerability is at light and slight levels, while when eco–environmental vulnerability is fragile, the inhibitory effect of economic growth is obvious in rural areas. The results can provide useful information for village–town planning.

Empirical Examinations of Whether Rural Population Decline Improves the Rural Eco-Environmental Quality in a Chinese Context

“…Existing studies have revealed that eco-environmental changes are negatively related to population density, but the role of rural population decline remains unclear [20,32,35]. In this study, we also found that a low rural population density can promote REQ.…”

“…The variables and their descriptions are presented in Table 2. The change in rural population density was adopted as an indicator of rural population changes because it can eliminate the influence of regional areas [20,32,35]. Although many regions experienced significant rural population decline, the rural population was still large, which may have produced considerable pressure on the REQ [4].…”

“…In this study, we employed the rural land average gross domestic product (GDP) and its change to represent the intensity and change in economic activities in rural areas, respectively. Road networks extend the scope of human activities and affect the surrounding environment [32,35]; therefore, to eliminate the influence of the area of a unit, we employed the road network density to represent the level of the road network.…”

“…Furthermore, numerous studies have focused on national eco-environmental change [12,23,34,35], whereas others have focused on special regions, such as ecologically urban agglomeration areas, ecologically vulnerable areas, mountainous areas [31,[36][37][38][39], and specific cities [26,40]. Contemporary research indicates that, although the EQ has been improving overall, some significant spatial differences have been observed, and the urban agglomerations and the surrounding areas of large cities have shown a declining EQ.…”

“…Thirdly, although the role of socioeconomic factors in the process of eco-environmental change has been widely addressed, demographic change factors have not gained sufficient attention. Some studies have employed population density as a factor in their analysis; however, there is a lack of discussion on how dramatic population changes affect ecoenvironmental changes [34,35].…”