Abstract
China is facing an important period of rural governance innovation and restructuring of territorial spatial patterns. This paper selects catchments as the most closely related spatial units for rural industrial development and rural settlement activities, profoundly revealing the characteristics of transformational development and spatial governance in mountainous areas. To date, extensive literature in this area has produced a broad multidisciplinary consensus on catchment water and soil conservation and rural industry development; however, the interactive mechanism of ecological, social, and economic networks, and the characteristics behind small catchments which benefit from spatial governance, have never been analyzed and are relatively new to the sphere of rural governance. Our research argues the relative importance of multi-scale catchment units compared with traditional administrative village units in enhancing the organizational benefits of rural revitalization in terms of workforce, resources, and capital, using the case study of a catchment in the Wuling mountainous area. Our study presents a framework to explore the multi-dimensional governance experience of a small catchment in the Wuling mountainous area and proposes to integrate the resource endowment advantages of small catchments into rural industries development and transform the economic and social benefits contained in the ecological environment into multi-scale spatial benefits among farmers, villages, and the regional rural area. However, not all cases provide positive evidence. The overall development of a catchment is confronted with complex constraints, which are mainly related to the development stage and local historical and geographical factors. Furthermore, affected by the top-down “project-system” in the “poverty era”, the logic of “betting on the strong” and the single-centered logic of resource allocation at the grassroots level exacerbated the fragmentation of the mountainous area. Generally speaking, the catchment perspective promotes regional linkage development and multi-center governance modes and triggers multidisciplinary theoretical thinking to some extent. The catchment’s overall development helps play to the comparative advantage of mountainous areas and promotes endogenous sustainable development to a certain degree. However, the promotion of catchment governance in poverty-stricken mountainous areas is faced with a lack of financial foundation and needs support in order to break through the national system and local social constraints.
Highlights
Introduction censeeMDPI, Basel, Switzerland.The difficult progress of mountainous development is universally recognized as largely arising from natural limitations, economic bottlenecks, and social, local, and political constraints [1]
Combined with the investigation and demonstration of typical cases in the sample area, this paper summarizes the local experience from the three aspects of resource endowment structure, vertical spatial productivity, and multi-center governance structure, and explores the benefits of small catchments for sustainable spatial governance according to local conditions
Governance constraints on the development of mountainous areas remain the bottleGovernance constraints on the development of mountainous areasprosperous remain thesociety bottleneck of China’s poverty alleviation and the building of a moderately neck of China’s poverty alleviation and the building of a moderately prosperous society proposed in all respects
Summary
Introduction censeeMDPI, Basel, Switzerland.The difficult progress of mountainous development is universally recognized as largely arising from natural limitations, economic bottlenecks, and social, local, and political constraints [1]. A catchment, as a composite unit with the main elements of ecology, society, and economy, is equipped with an innovative approach to land management, public service provision, and local governance organization units for mountainous development in an innovative and sustainable way [8,9]. While a complex web of overlapping political jurisdictions is present in catchment land and water management, most decision-making occurs at the local level of township, city, or village. Small catchments are the most closely related regional living units between humans and the environment in mountainous areas They have multi-scale and natural randomness characteristics, reflecting the comprehensive relationship between mountain natural geography, local society, and spatial governance. Focusing on a small catchment area as the research object helps to understand the driving force behind the development of a complex environment in mountainous areas and formulate effective strategies for rural industry prosperity and ecological livability
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