Cultivating eco-sustainability: Social–economic–natural complex ecosystem case studies in China.

Abstract: This paper discusses ecological development in China based on the theory and methodology of SENCE (social–economic–natural complex ecosystem), and two typical case studies of Yangzhou city and Dafeng city. Ecological development in China refers to the integrative learning process, integrative design process, interactive adaptation process resulting in ecologically sound, economically productive and behaviorally feasible development. Ecological development in China includes the ecological assessment/evaluation, ecological planning/design, ecological engineering and ecological management which require systematically responsible planning, totally functional design and ecologically vivid management. Since several decades of years, different scales of ecological administrative units including ecological county, ecopolis (eco-cities) and ecological provinces have been developed, which indicated that the process of ecological development helps local people to engage in a vision and actions regarding how the urban or regional ecosystems are coupling systematically, vitalizing and functioning ecologically and how the actions are connected with their social, economic and long-term ecological interests. The constructive practice of ecopolis and eco-provinces in China has demonstrated this success. The key instrument for ecological development in China is the eco-integration of total metabolism of material and energy; total cultivation of eco-industry, eco-scape and eco-culture; total coordination of systematic coupling in time, space, quantity, structure and order; total design of developmental goals of wealth, health and faith; total cooperation between decision makers, entrepreneurs, researchers and the public. The special emphasis of China''s ecological development has been placed on encouraging bottom-up and flexible actions rather than top-down and rigid institution, and helping local people to help themselves through capacity building. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]