Abstract
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched the conservation initiative of the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) in 2002, providing a new solution to current global problems such as widening gap between rich and poor, environmental pollution, biodiversity destruction and degradation of agro-ecological functions. However, since the implementation of GIAHS, few studies have evaluated the role of GIAHS in regional sustainable development. To fill this research gap, this paper attempts to build an evaluation index system that integrates economic, social and environmental sustainability by matching the 169 subgoals and 232 indices of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with five FAO-GIAHS selection criteria and selecting the indices. The index weights are determined through Delphi method (expert scoring) and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Then the GIAHS site of the Kuaijishan Ancient Chinese Torreya Community in Shaoxing City, Zhejiang Province is taken as an example for evaluation to enhance the empirical study. The results show that the comprehensive score for this heritage site is 77.90 points, of which economic, social and environmental sustainability scores 88.27, 86.12 and 69.71 points respectively, showing a descending trend. Thus, ecological protection of the Kuaijishan Ancient Chinese Torreya Community should be strengthened and be given prominence in the future. As for the contribution to further research, this SDGs-based GIAHS sustainability evaluation framework can serve as an important guide for assessing the approaches and effects of GIAHS in promoting the achievement of the SDGs. It can also be used for future international GIAHS sustainability assessment and comparison and provide a basis for adjusting the development model of GIAHS sites.
Highlights
China’s Rice Fish Culture was identified as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) site in 2005, and after 10 years of development, the price of rice produced in the region has doubled and tourism revenues have increased in Qingtian
In terms of economic sustainability, there is no population living below the national poverty line in this GIAHS site, and the growth rate of GDP directly due to GIAHS is relatively high, indicating that this GIAHS site has a good economic potential and can serve as an important guarantee for local economy
The GIAHS sustainability evaluation index system that takes into account economic, social and environmental aspects and index weights are built through two selection processes and expert systematic assessment, which provides an objective methodological reference for evaluating the contribution of GIAHS to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Summary
At the Millennium Summit in September 2000, 189 heads of state and representatives of the UN member nations signed the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which unanimously adopted the 8 general goals, 21 concrete targets and 60 indices of the Millennium. After more than a decade of international cooperation on development, in September 2015, the UN established Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a programmatic document to guide world development policies and the use of funds. Sustainability 2021, 13, 9957 from 2015 to 2030 for global poverty eradication as well as sustainable social, economic and environmental development. Scholars around the world have positively responded to the SDGs and focused on cities, energy, health, climate and poverty elimination [1,2,3].
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