Reinvent the Good Earth: National Ecological Security Pattern Plan, China

Abstract

This planning research project, the National Ecological Security Pattern Plan, was commissioned by the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection and was carried out by the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture (now the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture) at Peking University in association with Turenscape. It identifies critical strategic landscape structures for safeguarding natural, biological, cultural, and recreational processes, thus securing the wide range of ecosystem functions essential for sustaining human society. In China during the pre-scientific period, critical landscape patterns such as “dragon hills” (sacred hills) or “feng shui forests” were protected. In the last three decades, as population, economic development, and urbanization have significantly increased, people have altered the landscape to an unprecedented extent. This, along with global climate change, has profoundly disrupted the structure and function of ecosystems, resulting in increased ecological and environmental problems such as the melting of glaciers and permafrost, wetland degradation, soil erosion, desertification, flood intensification, loss of biodiversity, and degradation of water conservation capacity.