Exploring ecological strategies for the sustainability of rural communities

Rural eco-communities can be defined as rural communities that emphasise ecological and environmental protection and have comfortable living spaces. The ecological development of rural community has drawn wide attention of the government in China and numerous rural eco-communities thus emerged. In the case of a typical rural eco-community named Yanhe where we have continuously carried out tracking research over the past decade, this study provides a general analysis framework to obtain ecological strategies based on the ecological evaluation method and indicator system. For further analysis, some creative indicators, such as relative evaluation scores (RES), positive evaluation scores (PES) and negative evaluation scores (NES) were designed. These indicators could be applied to analyse the underlying reasons and providing improvement countermeasures. Combining the cross-analysis, specific ecological strategies have been proposed mainly from improving the treatment of water resources, the utilisation of garbage and the development and management of renewable energy. Furthermore, our research found that resource utilisation and energy development are major ecological problem in China at present. In response to these, some policy implications were put forward mainly include: to optimise the rural clean energy system; to further improve the rural water environment; and to further encourage public participation.