Exploring Sustainable Landscape Management in a Dike-Pond System
The dike-pond system in the Pearl River Delta in southern China is an example of a strongly adapted traditional system in transformation. Approaching this unique landscape on-site with a social-ecological lens was one of the most valuable experiences to me.
Cultural landscapes are the result of consecutive reorganization of the land in order to adapt its use and spatial structure better to the changing societal demands.
In order to satisfy their needs, humans have modified many landscapes around the world. In China alone, we can see highly specialized agricultural systems such as tea gardens, terraced hills, livestock systems, etc. These ‘cultural landscapes’ form a particularly clear expression of the interaction between humans and nature.
My name is Wenxiu Chi, and I am currently a guest researcher at the Social-Ecological Interactions research group. In China, I am pursuing a PhD in the department of landscape agriculture at the South China University of Technology, which is located in the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong Province. My general research interest in cultural landscapes brought me to a unique agricultural system typical of this district: the dike-pond system.
With my research I aim to contribute to a sustainable management framework for the dike-pond system. Due to the important role of agricultural landscapes for global sustainable development, land is no longer considered to be only used and consumed, but characterized by its crucial values and contributions to human wellbeing. It has been transformed into an object of dynamic conservation, and the management of change has therefore become an important topic in landscape studies. The question is, how can it be managed in a local context? My research addresses the following aspects:
- understanding local norms of landscape management, so to interpret the social constructions behind physical space;
- exploring the role of different actors in sustainable management and how to empower local people in management processes; and
- illustrating the impact of resource management and decision-making processes on landscape sustainability at the institutional level.
A traditional farming practice in transformation
The dike-pond system first appeared in the Pearl River Delta about 600 years ago. The Delta is formed by the confluence of three rivers, West River, North River and East River, with numerous tributaries. The center of the area is a low-lying plain area, surrounded by hills, mountains, and islands. This area was difficult to cultivate since it was often affected by floods at that time. As a response to the conflict between natural conditions and the need for agricultural production, people transformed the low-lying terrain near the rivers into fish ponds, and raised the dike surrounding the ponds for cropping or poultry, thus forming the dike-pond system. The products from this system are adjusted according to social needs: The evolution of crops was from fruit trees to mulberry trees, sugar canes, elephant grass and vegetables. The fish species changed from Chinese carps (black carp, grass carp, silver carp and bighead carp) to high value species, including eel, catfish, Mandarin Fish, etc.
In its early stage, the dike-pond system showed many characteristics that are typical of traditional farming practices (Konold, W. et al., 1996): With the parallel cultivation of dikes and ponds, early dike-pond farmers used the land in a multifunctional way, and rotated crops with high nutrient consumption such as sugarcane with other crops. Moreover, by-products such as field weeds and leaves of crops were ‘recycled’ and used as feed for fish, and the pond mud that accumulated a large amount of nutrients was regularly used as fertilizer for the crops on the dike. Dike-pond cultivation required only very little external energy input: fishing practice was conducted with low density, so relatively small amount of green feed was needed; besides, the necessary water exchange in the fish ponds relied on the water level difference between ponds and river. The dike-pond system was often intertwined with the rice cultivation system, thus reflecting what is called the typical ‘spatial fuzziness’ of traditional systems.
Based on traditional ecological knowledge that evolved through the centuries, traditional dike-pond cultivation thus carries multiple relevant values: The multifunctional land use creates a variety of habitats, and the flexible adjustment of production offers economic benefits. Moreover, dike-pond systems accommodate a large number of laborers, thus promoting social identity and a whole culture embedded in the farming practice.
However, as one of the economic centers in China, the Pearl River Delta has experienced rapid urbanization. During the last three decades, the population, industries and land-use patterns have undergone fundamental changes, which has inevitably brought profound and lasting impacts on the dike-pond system. First, numerous industrial and residential constructions have greatly compressed the agricultural areas. As far as the dike-pond district is concerned, the land construction intensity has increased from 8.17% in 1980 to 42.59% in 2017, and the total area of the dike-pond system has decreased from 787km² to 414km² during this time (Caixia Chen, 2021). In addition, the emergence of enterprises in villages has fragmented the system. What’s more, affected by the market economy, farmers’ livelihood choices have shifted from multi-dimensional production to only fish farming.
Nevertheless, the dike-pond system is still one of the most important agricultural systems in the Pearl River Delta. Therefore, it is of great significance to explore the protection and development goals that affect it, as well as the alternative management approaches already in place that aim to foster its sustainable development.
Understanding the dike-pond system from the inside
In the beginning of my research, I came to the system as an outside observer who only learnt about it from the literature and didn’t visit the site in person. So many questions came up that seemed worth pursuing: How do local people living inside this system perceive it? How do they manage and maintain the system? What are the threats and challenges they face in managing it?
With these questions in mind, I started my fieldwork in November 2021, and switched my perspective from outside to inside. Doing this was hard at the beginning, as everything was new to me: a new environment with completely unknown people and social dynamics.
Looking back at that time now, I would say it was one of the greatest experiences in my life: I talked to different stakeholders at different levels of decision-making, held a symposium with the local government, and interviewed local farmers. I got in close connection with local people, which led me to a deeper understanding of the social dimension of the dike-pond system.
Local farming practices
Through interviews with the farmers, I learned that there are different attitudes in the management of this system, especially depending on farmers’ age: 80% of the people are over 50 years old, but with the transformation of traditional fish farming to a modern fishing industry, more and more young people are investing in the dike-pond system.
Elderly farmers are still conducting traditional management practices such as cropping on the dike, and many old farmers keep native species on their lands. Asking me if I needed some lemons, one farmer I interviewed led me to his ponds and showed me the diverse plants beside it — lemons, grapefruit, bananas, green onions, lettuce, tomatoes and so on. Thus, although the economic status of the dike has declined, the important function of maintaining biodiversity is still in place in the traditional way of farming.
Young farmers, on the other hand, focus their management on a single production, and pursue higher fishing yields through the improvement of technology instead of making use of traditional techniques. In addition to dike cropping, this difference between traditional and modern approaches, elderly and young farmers also affects water resource management and supporting facilities. In the long term, however, the management concepts of the younger generation will play a key role in the future development of the dike-pond system.
Reflections on the institutional level
The topic mentioned by local people most frequently is the price of land. This leads us at the decisive role of the land rights of the Pearl River Delta in the management of the dike-pond system, involving different levels of decision-making processes, and conflicts between multiple stakeholders.
According to the short-term land responsibility system in place in this region, the farmers need to return the land to the village collective every five years, and then re-acquire lands through public bidding. Here, at least three groups of stakeholders are involved: the farmers, who rent lands from the collective every 5 years, the community residents, who get cash bonuses from the collective land income, and the village collective, deciding how to use and allocate the resources properly.
This process touches on two hot topics: the first one is conservation policy-making. The system ensures the autonomy of land use at a community level and greatly promotes land-use efficiency. However, it also increases the complexity of cooperation between governments and the community, especially on the policies that will reduce the economic income of the community in a short term while providing them with long-term benefits. This complexity is one of the biggest headaches for governmental institutions.
In addition, the allocation of resources potentially involves conflicts between farmers and other community members:. Farmers aim for low rents to control production costs, while other members aim to increase rents to get more cash bonus. For farmers, under the trend of higher and higher land costs, there is an urge to seek transformation in production elements, technology, and labor structure, which gradually develops into a “high risk, high cost and high profit” production mechanism, and strongly affects the dike-pond system management.
The experience of conducting fieldwork in the Pearl River Delta was very precious to me: Not only has it helped me to understand the dike-pond system better in its local cultural context, but it also brought me a lot of friends. At present, my research on this unique cultural landscape is still in the preliminary stage — there is still a long way to go.
Learn more about my research on the dike-pond landscape and landscape governance in the South Chinese Pearl River Delta in a follow-up post.
Contact:Wenxiu Chi, visiting PhD Researcher, Social-Ecological Interactions in Agricultural Systems Section, Georg-August University Göttingen
