AGRICULTURAL GREEN DEVELOPMENT IN THE ERHAI LAKE BASIN—THE WAY FORWARD

Highlights

● Erhai Lake basin faces the duel challenge of enhancing water protection and increasing farmer income.

● A new framework indicates the key strategies for tackling the multiple challenges of agricultural green development in Erhai.

● The needs for interdisciplinary research innovation and smallholder enabled technology transformation identified.

● Building trust and partnerships between farmers, citizens, local government, industry and extension services should be prioritized.

● Agricultural green development in Erhai can serve as a model for other high-altitude lake basins.

Abstract

Pollution of high-altitude lake basins by agriculture and rural activities, and the control of this pollution, have received increasing attention from academic research and government policy in China. Series of restrictions and regulations have been implemented to protect the surface water quality. These restrictions and regulations have greatly impacted and transformed the agricultural systems and rural livelihoods surrounding these lake basins. Using Erhai Lake basin in Yunnan Province as a case study, three main challenges were identified for concurrently decreasing pollution in the lake and increasing farmer income. It is contended that scientifically-sound environmental protection policies and agricultural green development practices are key to reversing the current situation. This will help to protect the lake from pollution while smallholder farmers will be able to produce healthy food in an environmentally sustainable manner, and with a fair remuneration for all the services farmers provide to the society.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

agriculture / farmer income / nitrogen / phosphorus / water pollution

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Major Science and Technology Project of Yunnan Province (202202AE090034), the Project of Beijing’s Top-Precision-Advanced Disciplines, and the Key Consulting Project of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. We thank the supports from the government of Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture during the farmer survey and policy consultation. Thanks is also given to all researchers and students working for field experiments and surveys under the support of Erhai Academy of Green Development (EAGD).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Yong Hou, Wen Xu, Wenfeng Cong, Kemo Jin, Jiuliang Xu, Hao Ying, Shengrui Wang, Hu Sheng, Linzhang Yang, Wenqi Ma, Oene Oenema, Zhengxiong Zhao, and Fusuo Zhang declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2023. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)