Sustainable development analysis from ecological footprints of traditional agricultural areas— A case study of Congjiang County of Guizhou Province

Due to some natural and historical reasons, Congjiang County of Guizhou Province has been maintaining a typically traditional rice-fish system that is characterized by both traditional ecological agriculture and distinctive cultural heritage. In order to appreciate the values of this kind of agricultural heritage and to provide theoretical basis for its rational protection, this paper analyzed the ecological footprint composition of the agricultural heritage site, Congjiang County, summarized the characteristics of resource consumption of the traditional agricultural area and revealed the significance of the traditional agriculture in regional ecological conservation, resource consumption and sustainable development. Results show that the footprints for food and shelter occupy a very high proportion, respectively registering 45.9% and 33.3% of the total footprint demand, which results in a high occupation of arable land and forest; the occupation of CO₂ area, however, is comparatively small, accounting for only 3.0% of the total footprint while the combustion of fuel wood provided by forest is a major part of the local energy footprint, which is dramatically different from that of industrialized regions characterized by fossil fuel combustion. Low resource consumption has enabled Congjiang County to maintain in an ecological balance with the ecological surplus of 0.058 1 hm2 per capita in 2007. Hence it can be seen that traditional agriculture plays a very important role not only on regional ecological conservation and cultural heritage but also on sustainable regional socio-economic development through changing the agricultural production mode and consumption patterns of local people.