1. Introduction: Context and Setting
China is undergoing rapid urbanization [
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6] and according to the data from the national bureau of statistics, the rate increased from 10.64% in 1949 to 58.52% in 2017 and reached 60% in 2019. China’s urbanization progress will continue, with the urbanization ratio reaching 70 percent by 2035, according to a report published by the National Academy of Economic Strategy under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Over the past 25 years or so, China has been experiencing arguably the most rapid, dramatic and far-reaching process of urbanization in human history. It therefore merits separate attention, despite both similarities to and differences from experiences elsewhere. The trend to greater urbanization is nationwide, but reflecting the distinctive national and regional political economies. According to a report in the “
China Daily”, the structure and function of China’s “urban areas is expected to evolve from a metropolitan focus to urban agglomeration dominance in the next 15 years. It is projected that the pattern of urbanized population will be across the spectrum of urban agglomerations, with 25 percent in small towns, 25 percent in small- and medium-sized cities, and 25 percent in central cities and metropolises, respectively. A metropolis will support functions of modern services [
6], These include knowledge-concentrated industries, that is, those that need many talents to develop, and capital-concentrated industry, and small- and medium-sized cities will support industries from a metropolis, such as the manufacturing industry, in the future” (
https://www.china-daily.com.cn/a/201906/24/WS5d1089b0a3103dbf14329ea7.html) (accessed on 3 November 2020).
Mobility of the workforce in China was first enhanced by the implementation of the household responsibility system (HRS), which, in 1982, dismantled the communes and gave rural households individual contracts to farm agricultural land [
4,
6,
7,
8]. A more efficient and productive use of resources-including labor-allowed for greater agricultural output and income, as markets for rural products thrived. The household became the main unit of production, at the same time that it acquired greater freedom of labor allocation as well as in migration decisions. Both household size and structure (the household development cycle) as well as land cultivation needs became important determinants of household surplus labor. In order to diversify the household income, surplus labor began to engage in off-farm work. However, the pull factor created by enterprise labor demand led many peasant workers to leave the countryside even when they were not surplus to agricultural production [
4,
6,
7,
8]. Mobility has further been ensured by a set of policies diminishing central state control over provincial and lower administrative units, which can now establish their own economic priorities. The new provincial and local economic strategies-especially in medium and larger urban areas-include bringing in cheap labor to work in construction, manufacturing and other service sectors. On the other side of the spectrum, decentralization policies in the rural areas have encouraged local governments to actively promote and facilitate out-migration in order to increase village living standards through migrant remittances. Increasing proportions of rural households and village income are indeed being derived from both migration and other non-agricultural activities. This spread of the availability of non-agricultural incomes and improved living standards means that villagers need not migrate to become better off, while reducing migration pressure. This is what Friedmann [
6]) calls “in situ rural urbanization”. Better housing (electricity, indoor plumbing), access to the internet, more transport options (bus train, car), etc. make it possible to work from home and enjoy the comforts previously only found in urban areas. Following introduction of the HRS, rural urbanization and industrialization also commenced. Peri-urbanization has been occurring on a large scale, especially near larger cities and is seen as an industrially driven process [
4,
5,
6]. Some peri-urban districts have become completely urbanized, absorbed by growing cities and sometimes even incorporated as urban administrative districts [
5,
7,
8,
9,
10].
One consequence of urbanization has been the rise in importance of peri-urban areas (PUAs) and peri-rural areas (PRAs), which are the transitional areas between urban and rural landscapes; they exist at the intersection of rural and urban zones, often where infrastructure such as agriculture, shopping, roads and economic centers exist, just beyond the existing urban areas and the beginning of the rural areas proper. According to Christine FÜrst and her colleagues at Halle University, in Germany, “The peri-urbanization processes are affecting the sustainability of transitional peri-urban landscapes (PULs). The biodiversity of PULs is becoming endangered along with the provisioning of ecosystem goods and services due to the investments on infrastructure, communications, and services such as piped water, electrification and sewerage treatment works occurring in PULs”. At the same time, PULs are being characterized by a rising demand for various types of ecosystem services (ESs), while ES-providing areas in PULs are diminishing. This situation is causing ES and biodiversity trade-offs, thereby intensifying a gap between ES demand and provision. The degradation and loss of vital ecosystem functions and services have been an uncontested result of urbanization. An understanding of how ecosystem services are provided along rural–urban gradients is crucial in the task of conserving and enhancing vital services in urban environments, increasing the quality of life of urban dwellers, and working towards a sustainable future. Focusing on nine ecosystem services—aesthetic, spiritual, recreation, water flow regulation, carbon sequestration, climate change adaptation, pollination, biodiversity potential and noise attenuation—regarded as important to urban areas, we can detail the changes in the values of these services along a gradient comprising four categories of urbanization: urban, suburban, peri-urban and rural.
The greatly accelerated economic and social development that accompanies rapid urbanization has also engendered numerous environmental problems, such as local climate alteration, changes in carbon storage, increased air and water pollution, increased energy demands [
5,
7,
8,
9,
10], a major reduction in natural vegetation and decreased ecosystem service provision [
10,
11]. The increasing population density and demands of urban environments have exacerbated the pollution of air and water and affected water availability, leading to solid, liquid and gaseous waste disposal problems, and a high level of energy consumption (see below). The challenges of solid waste management include inadequate infrastructure, a paucity of policy and legal frameworks, poor environmental planning, budgetary and operational constraints, overpopulation and inadequate environmental education [
6]. Urbanization is a growing issue and, therefore, so is the consequent waste generation and its management challenges. An aspect that has received some attention is the damage to soil quality through the disposal of saline wastewater or from contaminated industrial liquids that are discharged into waterways or onto the surface. Intensive livestock production facilities like poultry farms and piggeries or slaughterhouses and sewerage sludge solid waste and polluted effluent may also be problems in peri-urban areas. Managing these and other difficulties as the urban areas expand will require stronger planning guidelines and policies [
8,
9,
10].
2. Environmental Degradation in the Peri-Urban Interface (PUI)
There is a downside to economic growth. It has come at the expense of natural resources and ecosystems. Many terrestrial ecosystems are being seriously degraded because land use decisions often fail to recognize non-economic ecosystem functions and biophysical limits to productivity [
11,
12,
13,
14]. Diverse urbanization and peri-urbanization processes have had unpredictable and complex human consequences (see Simon’s review paper [
14]) but our focus here is on the environmental implications. These have generally been severe and are increasingly recognized officially as “unsustainable”. Attention to measures aimed at remediation and prevention is therefore urgent and essential. Levels of river and soil pollution and contamination from often toxic waste are high, resulting in health problems and severe agricultural contamination, such as the high levels of cadmium in rice. Nearly half the rice and rice products on sale in Guangzhou (a large and prosperous province in south China) contain too much cadmium, a toxin and carcinogen that can damage the kidneys (Available online:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1240198/guangzhou-food-safety-authorities-find-high-levels-cadmium-rice, accessed on 11 November 2020).
In many urban areas of China, not just in large cities like Beijing, air quality is very poor and governments at all levels are taking action to remedy the situation. The Chinese government’s attitude to economic growth and industrialization at any cost has now changed and concerted efforts are being made to tackle both proximal and root causes. Pollution abatement measures and greenhouse gas emission reductions are now being introduced energetically. Prime agricultural land is being lost to urban activities in high-potential areas like the major river deltas—precisely where urbanization has been most rapid and extensive. Such loss cannot readily and sustainably be compensated for by bringing lower-potential land elsewhere into production or by intensifying existing production [
5,
7,
12,
13]. As we are reminded by David Simon [
14] “environmental issues and problems have featured prominently in processes of peri-urbanization and the nature of PUIs almost everywhere. It is important to underscore that PUIs everywhere are not independent or isolated zones but are highly dynamic interfaces between urban and rural areas. Forces and pressures acting in the PUI are therefore not only local but national and even international, in terms of human mobility, commodity and financial flows and their valuation, and claims on environmental resources”.
The increasing urbanization pressures on ecosystems and the threat to their potential for the provision of ecosystem goods and services (EG & S) have been highlighted in many studies. According to the World Bank [
15], the PUI is a particularly vulnerable zone as cities expand and infrastructure is installed. In addition, the majority of the world’s poor, perhaps as many as 70%, live in these towns and small and medium cities and the rural areas more proximate to them. About 5.5 billion persons, three quarters of all of us on Earth, live in the increasingly diffuse and porous interface of rural and urban societies. Moreover, rates of poverty are also higher in small and medium cities than in large urban agglomerations [
2,
13].
The rural–urban fringe, also known as the outskirts, peri-urban area or the urban hinterland, can be described as the “landscape interface between town and country”, or also as the transition zone where urban and rural uses mix and often clash [
8,
11]. Alternatively, it can be viewed as a landscape type in its own right, one forged from an interaction of urban and rural land uses. The rural–urban interface or continuum extends from the rural areas to the towns and cities of China. It is quite variegated and is characterized by a complex nexus of sites, including primary and secondary sites in relationships of gain and loss, dominance and subordination, associated in different ways with rural-to-urban migration [
8,
10]. The UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment [
16] (2005) states that the degradation of environmental services is a significant barrier to achieving the Millennium Development Goals—and that this impediment could grow significantly worse over the next 50 years. The rural poor, who directly rely on ecosystem goods and services for their diet, health and livelihoods, are disproportionately affected [
4,
9,
10,
12,
13].
The scope and character of the production and distribution systems have been restructured in the past few decades by what is now known as “globalization”. Peoples’ lives have been affected in profound cultural, ideological and economic ways. Globalization impinges on the provision of environmental goods and services (EG & S) in many different ways [
12,
14,
15,
16,
17,
18]).
Seto et al. [
3] say “As urbanisation proceeds, there is an increasing supply/demand ratio of food and water but a decreasing supply of energy”. As the population grows, per capita supply of farmland is increasingly in competition with accelerated urbanization [
5,
7,
15,
17,
18,
19]. Many studies are now examining the impact of ecosystem service conservation strategies on agricultural productivity [
8,
10,
11,
16]. The unprecedented scale of land use change has contributed significantly to changing local, regional and global climates. In the future, there is a high likelihood that the management will be geared to favor some ecosystem services (e.g., provisioning) over others (e.g., supporting). Urban regions face transitions in land use that affect ecosystem services (ESs) and thus human wellbeing. Especially in urban regions with high population densities and high demand for ESs, the future availability of such services must be considered to promote effective and sustainable decision making and prevent further ecosystem degradation. There are indications that the land use transitions that most significantly affect ES degradation or improvement are those from arable land to mainly non-residential uses—especially public and private services [
8,
9,
10,
11,
13,
19].
Although there is broad agreement on the importance of incorporating the concept of ecosystem services into policy strategies and decision making, the lack of a standardized approach and funding, to facilitate quantification of ecosystem services at the landscape scale, has hindered progress in this direction. In addition, the pattern of ecosystem demands shows a leveling of rural–urban gradients, reflecting profound modifications of traditional rural–urban relationships. The changes of ecosystem service supply gradients are determined more by land use intensity, such as the intensification of agricultural production, than by land cover changes such as urban sprawl. The comparison of supply/demand ratios and rural–urban patterns of ecosystem services can help decision makers involved in landscape management as they strive for a sustainable balance between resource supply and demand. There is neither a typical rural–urban gradient in terms of urban ecosystem service provisioning nor a uniform urban spatial pattern of service provisioning that can serve as a generic model for cities [
5,
9,
11,
13,
14].
3. Spatial and Environment Development Issues in the Rural–Urban Interface in Qinzhou Prefecture, Guangxi
In this paper, we try to develop a better understanding of the processes and forces at play and have endeavored to develop a “template” that allows local government planners and land managers to rapidly appraise the status and trend of EG & S provision. We use examples from the rural–urban fringe in Guangxi, China and trace the patterns that have emerged over the past decade and we attempt to project toward 2050, the end point of many of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). We focus on the dynamic developing coastal regions of Guangxi, China, along the shores of the South China Sea. Urbanization has been rapid and has created often wide and persistent transition zones that combine various rural and urban conditions. Moreover, their importance for the cities that they surround is increasingly appreciated. These impacts have been summarized by David Simon [
14] as (i) absorbing urban migrants, as (ii) sources of food, water and other resources and as (iii) key areas for the disposal of urban wastes. They are also, typically, zones of mixed land use and livelihoods. On account of these characteristics, and the interactions between such areas and the cities, they have come to be known as peri-urban zones or interfaces (PUIs) and have become major research foci in their own right. PUIs comprise distinctive zones of mixed character beyond the suburbs [
10]. Crucially, fringe or PUI areas should be treated as integral elements of urban systems (i.e., as extensions of cities) in both functional and planning terms, because they and their environments are integral to the growth and operation of growing cities, including being the source of vital ES & G.
There are many transitional zones (PUIs) between the distinctly urban and the unambiguously rural areas and these have special characteristics. Cities are dynamic human artifacts and they constantly undergo structural change, redevelopment, and growth [
10,
12,
17,
18,
19]. Such processes also involve changes in urban relationships with the surrounding territory, most conspicuously on their outskirts. The importance of PUIs everywhere lies in their dynamic mix of functions and land uses; increasing population densities; growing significance as sources of urban food, construction materials and other resources; as urban waste disposal or treatment sites; and as recreational zones. However, primarily, we focus on their role in provisioning of ES & G. Although urban expansion rarely occurs neatly or uniformly, little attention has been devoted to the dynamics of, or implications for, the urban–rural fringe or transition zone. The spread of urban activities and land uses into rural areas create complex mosaics of juxtaposed activities previously regarded as incompatible, e.g., computer assembly workshops adjacent to rice paddy fields or sugar cane plantations, and urban activities and urban-oriented leisure activities, e.g., golf courses abutting rural villages [
8].
5. Discussion
The population of towns within QinBei District have been increasing rapidly over recent years. This increase has been from natural growth and in-migration into the towns, mainly of government employees, alongside the engulfment of villages as urban centers. This increasing population does not sit well with the concomitant socio-economic infrastructure building program and poses a lot of planning challenges for the township administrators. The urban administrators need to further develop and exploit the database on land use changes to plan for the current and future land uses as a major thrust in urban and peri-urban space management. This land use planning must integrate economic, social and environmental considerations now and in the future for the sustainable management of the urban space that depends heavily on the EG & S from the surrounding rural land and in the peri-urban zones [
21,
22,
23,
24,
25,
26,
27].
The presence of expanding local government bureaus and private entrepreneurs in Qinzhou Prefecture provided avenues for employment, thus pulling people into the county towns and even smaller urban fringes. For example, the emerging towns in QinBei District have become urban, not only as a result of population growth but also as a result of political influence. Settlements that were once rural were later upgraded, for example, to house a local headquarters through government efforts to take administration closer to the people (decentralization). The rapid population growth has influenced changes in land cover. Until recent times, the urban space within QinBei District covered an approximate area of 124 km2, surrounded by open and gallery forests and grasslands, including savanna and some pockets of farmland. A small percentage still comprises wasteland with barren rocky areas, degraded rocks, land with or without trees/shrubs and exposed rocks. Nowadays, agricultural land (terraced uplands, flat cropland and grazing land) comprises about 28% of the area and the built-up area is a little more than 17%, while the peri-urban areas comprise 45%. It is from these rural and peri-urban areas that most provisioning EG & S (food, water, timber, air purification, soil formation and pollination) flow. Of course, there is also a great contribution to the other three ESs (regulating, cultural and supporting services).
Rapid change in the urban space poses many challenges to town planning and future urban sustainability since the majority of these expanding sites are encroaching on marginal areas and agricultural productive land, including some that is quite marginal (because of slope, shallow soil depth and rockiness). A fundamental problem in land use and land cover changes in QinBei is how to preserve agricultural land. As the urban space keeps on growing, the unfortunate thing is that there is no piece of land actually reserved for agricultural use, although the urban dwellers need food. There has been engulfment of villages by urban space too (see new housing cluster in
Figure 2). A major peri-urban challenge is how to protect the environment (especially ecosystem services) and human health while meeting the growing demand for water and development that is driven by population growth and affected by climate variability and land use change. The local government administrators need to further develop and exploit the database on land use changes to plan for the current and future land uses as a major thrust in urban and peri-urban space management. This land use planning must integrate economic, social and environmental considerations now and in the future for the sustainable management of the urban spaces that depend heavily on the EG & S from the surrounding rural land and in the peri-urban zones [
26,
27]. The steady economic and urban growth of towns over recent decades has brought with it a wide range of management concerns, demands and conflicts, and these are more complex than ever before. A major urban challenge is how to protect the environment (especially ecosystem services) and human health while meeting the growing demand for water and development that is driven by population growth and affected by climate variability and land use change [
28]. Increasing demands for clean water, combined with changing land use practices and aging infrastructure (especially pipelines and canals), pose significant threats to the water resources [
29].
6. Conclusions
Close interdependence between people and supportive ecosystems is further endorsed by our exploration of systemic linkages between the key social, technological, environmental, economic and political dimensions under the social, technological, environmental, economic, political (STEEP) model. Ecosystem–human interdependencies happen within complex socio-ecological systems, with highly interdependent governance arrangements, technology choices and economic considerations, hence our choice of the STEEP methodology. The STEEP framework was also used to stratify the information gathered and to explore systemic interdependencies between different components using key and contextual questions. RAWES enabled integration of different types of knowledge, both rapidly gathered statistical and non-statistical evidence, articulating in semi-statistical terms (ESIs) the tangible spatial and temporal differences in ecosystem service provision from the village landscapes.
This study offers a perspective of land use change in the peri-urban interface in rural Guangxi, which helps to explore the formation and change of rural land use and actual functions, as well as the mechanisms behind them. Our study could have some implications for improving rural development strategies, rural planning and governance in China. Tracking spatial restructuring in peri-urban areas in terms of their land use changes and their underlying economic dynamics is a key perspective in the study of rural development in fast-developing China. The reform and opening policy, which took place in the 1980s (see above) has significantly transformed China’s rural areas. A large amount of rural labor force has moved to and is working in cities due to the attraction of the lifestyle and the prosperity that cities can offer, resulting in many hollow villages [
29,
30,
31,
32,
33]. In contrast, urbanization and industrialization have caused a dramatic change in the land use and natural landscape of rural areas, along with a significant loss of cultivated land, a spatial expansion of the surrounding cities and an increase in the construction of new rural settlements [
30,
31,
32,
33].
The template that we devised, based on the multi-methods approach, compared ecosystem service provision and identified the factors behind linked socio-ecological regeneration in local villages, seeking transferrable lessons for areas facing similar problems. As suggested by Pagella and Sinclair [
34], a new and comprehensive typology of ES maps, developed by logical expansion of the basic stock–flow–receptor concept, could result in a set of map categories and interactions that embraces requirements for the management of ES provision from rural landscapes. We plan to incorporate this thinking into the next phase of the project. In this preliminary phase, we tried to produce a map at a scale and resolution that allows field-scale management options to be exercised. We learned that it is also necessary to incorporate stakeholder knowledge and perspectives in the generation and interpretation of maps and adopt more flexible approaches to local definition of ESs by stakeholders (land users and government officials) to facilitate their management at local scales. There are potential trade-offs (and some actually occurring now) between the people causing damage to EG & S and those who are providing off-setting EG & S and enhancing the local ecosystem [
17,
19,
35,
36,
37].
The three mixed methods facilitated analysis of systemic interactions across the socio-cultural system and revealed differences in land use and condition and resultant societal benefit flows across sampled areas. Ecosystem–human interdependencies happen within complex socio-ecological systems, with highly interdependent governance arrangements, technology choices and economic considerations, hence our choice of the STEEP and RAWES methodology. We acknowledge the limitations and uncertainties inherent in this study, in which different forms of knowledge are integrated to seek understanding of, and transferrable principles from, the successes observed. Ideally, further research would replicate these surveys and analyses in many more villages to deepen understanding of sustainable ecosystem–community relationships. Nevertheless, although the findings of this study are subject to some unquantifiable uncertainty, they illustrate how different governance arrangements have profound impacts on whole socio-ecological systems and the sustainable accommodation between people and the natural systems that support them. This knowledge is transferrable to other situations in the rapidly developing regions in China and ASEAN countries and in many African countries where urbanization is accelerating and where peri-urban areas are extensive, noting of course that specific details relevant to the villages in the Qinzhou region require adaptation to other ecosystem types.