Resilience of mega-cities: the case of ,

1. Introduction

Shenzhen is located adjacent to in southern China. In just 30 years, Shenzhen has grown from a mosaic of villages and farmland across a broad coastal plain to the mega-city it is today (Error! Reference source not found., Error! Reference source not found.) (Ma, 2006; UN DESA, 2012). Shenzhen’s resident population was 10.6 million in 2011, and is projected to rise to 15.5 million in 2025 (UN DESA, 2012). There is also a non-resident floating population that increases the actual total population to an estimated 12 million or greater (Luan, Huang, & Zhang, 2007). Accompanying population growth and urbanisation has been significant industrialisation (Oizumi, 2011).

Urbanisation and industrialisation have had a substantial impact on sustainability and ecosystem health in Shenzhen. The future resilience of the city is highly dependent on issues of scale, adaptability, vulnerability and holistic management.

2. Environmental health

Shenzhen’s rapid urbanisation and development has led to negative impacts on biodiversity, air quality, water quality, and resource consumption. These ecosystem health impacts have in turn affected human health.

The clearance of natural vegetation in Shenzhen commenced when villages started to be established on the coastal plain around 600 years ago, and has increased through the urbanisation phase over

the past 30 years (Luan et al., 2007; Ma, 2006). Vegetation clearance and development impacts have badly affected some natural ecosystems (Luan et al., 2007). One of these is the Futian coastal mangroves, which are of high importance to migratory bird species but have been greatly reduced in area and impacted by poor water quality (Luan et al., 2007). Natural forest has been retained over around 30% of the Shenzhen land area (Che, English, Lu, & Chen, 2011).

The primary air pollutants affecting Shenzhen at present are Sulphur Dioxide (SO2), Nitrous Oxides

(NOX), and particulates that can be inhaled (Luan et al., 2007). As a result of this air pollution,

Shenzhen also experiences acid rain (Luan et al., 2007). The main source of SO2 is electricity generation (Luan et al., 2007). NOX pollution is more serious than SO2 pollution, and the main sources are vehicle emissions and industry (Luan et al., 2007). Particulate pollution is mainly caused by vehicle emissions and dust from urban development (Luan et al., 2007). National indicators for air quality are specified in the Ambient Air Quality Standard (MEP, 2012), and despite rising emissions Shenzhen met the standards on all but three days in 2012 (SZHEC, 2013). In 2012, the frequency of acid rainfall in Shenzhen was 59.5% (SZHEC, 2013).

Indicators for water quality are specified in national standards including the Environmental quality standard for surface water (MEP, 2002) and Sea water quality standard (MEP, 1998). These standards class water quality on scale of I (one) to V (five), where Class I is the highest quality and Class V the lowest. As shown in Table 1, the water quality in Shenzhen waterways and much of the adjacent seas is very poor (Chang, Tian, & Li, 2012). Because of poor water quality, ‘red tide’ algal blooms are a common occurrence in Shenzhen’s western sea (Luan et al., 2007).

Table 1 Environmental Water Quality in Shenzhen, 2008 (Chang et al., 2012)

Inferior to Class V, Environmental quality standard for surface Water quality of main rivers water (MEP, 2002)

Water quality of eastern sea Reached Class I, Sea water quality standard (MEP, 1998)

Water quality of western sea Inferior to Class IV, Sea water quality standard (MEP, 1998)

2.1. Human Impact

‘Ecological footprint’ is a way of analysing consumption and waste in relation to the ‘biocapacity’ of the Earth to create new resources and assimilate waste (Parris & Kates, 2003; WWF, 2012). The per capita ecological footprint in China is 2.1 gha (global hectares), which is lower than the global average of 2.8 gha (WWF, 2012). However, it is higher than the Earth’s per capita biocapacity, which is 1.8 gha, and China’s very large population means that its total country footprint is 2.9 billion gha, the highest in the world (WWF, 2012). China’s ecological footprint has increased considerably since the 1960s, while through the same period there has been a slight decline in biocapacity (WWF, 2012). China’s carbon footprint is the fastest growing component of its overall footprint (WWF, 2012).

Guangdong Province, where Shenzhen is located, accounts for nearly 10% of China’s ecological footprint (WWF, 2012). Shenzhen’s ecological footprint is impacting heavily on water supply security, with Shenzhen sourcing most of its water from one river system where the water resources have been allocated to 52 million people (le Clue, 2012). China’s very large population and continued urbanisation are also leading to a scarcity of cultivated land, which puts food security at risk (J. Chen, 2007).

2.2. Human health

Ecosystem health directly affects human health (Rapport, 2002). This is already observable in Shenzhen, with the declines in Shenzhen’s biodiversity, air quality, water quality and the resource base contributing to a tripling of cancer rates in residents over the 10 years to 2012 (Zhang, 2012).

3. Social-ecological systems

Ecosystem health is linked to society and economy in complex ways (Holling, 2001). The declines in ecosystem health in Shenzhen have been caused by human society urbanising and industrialising (Luan et al., 2007), and these changes in ecosystem health have in turn affected the health of human society (Zhang, 2012). Complexities in social-ecological systems exist across scales of time and space (Holling, 2001), and processes at smaller scales can influence those at larger scales (Levin, 1998). For example, Shenzhen’s greenhouse gas emissions are part of China’s rapidly rising emissions, which are in turn contributing to global warming (WWF, 2012).

Social-ecological systems go through cycles of change over time (Walker & Salt, 2006). Four phases of change can be identified –exploitation, conservation, release, and reorganisation – as shown in Error! Reference source not found. (Holling, 2007). These phases make up what is known as an ‘adaptive cycle’ because they describe how systems organise themselves and adapt to change. The adaptive cycle can be clearly seen in China’s numerous dynasties (Tsin, 2009), each of which rose (exploitation phase), accumulated resources and lost resilience (conservation phase), and then fell (release phase), giving rise to a new dynasty (reorganisation phase).

3.1. Adaption

Adaptive cycles exist within a ‘panarchy’ of smaller, faster cycles and larger, slower cycles (Holling, 2004). There are connections reorganisation between these cycles, and two conservation important connections are ‘revolt’ and ‘remember’ as shown in Error! Reference source not found. (Bunnell, 2002). In Chinese dynasties, revolt from small scale factors, for

release exploitation example a civil war, could cause the political structures of the country to collapse, but a longer-term cultural memory led to the political structures of the new dynasty being reorganised in a similar way to the old (Holling, 2004; Tsin, 2009).

China has a long history of civilization, with its first cities established more than 3,000 years ago (Tsin, 2009). By 1970, China’s population had already reached 830 million (NBS, 2006), but it was only in the early 1970s that China’s ecological footprint started to exceed its biocapacity (WWF, 2012). In the 1970s, at the end of the Cultural Revolution, China embarked on a course of reform and opening up (CIIC, 2008). Shenzhen was established as model of economic reform through urbanisation and associated industrialisation, becoming China’s first Special Economic Zone in 1980 (H. Chen, 2010). There is a close correlation between urbanisation and economic development (Glaeser, 2011), and the Chinese Government is continuing to use urbanisation to improve the economic situation of Chinese society (Yang, 2013).

Prior to the 1970s, the Shenzhen area had gone through numerous cycles of change, but natural ecosystems and the agrarian society and economy remained resilient through those changes (Walker, Holling, Carpenter, & Kinzig, 2004; Wittfogel, 1957). Now, natural systems have been stressed to the point where resilience has been lost and vulnerability increased (Folke, 2006). Thresholds are at high risk of being crossed, creating the potential for catastrophic change (Scheffer, Carpenter, Foley, Folke, & Walker, 2001). Elsewhere in China, many water supplies have dried up from over extraction and those that remain are heavily polluted, leaving millions of people without access to safe drinking water (China Water Risk, 2013). Shenzhen’s already precipitous water supply situation puts it at high risk of such a catastrophic collapse (le Clue, 2012).

3.2. Socially relevant sustainability

The concept of ‘sustainability’ arose in the early 1970s with societal awareness of the environmental impacts of modern civilisation in the developed world, and the drive for ‘sustainable development’ commenced soon after (Basiago, 1995). However, China’s adoption of the western consumption- based economic model that had brought about modern civilisation in the developed world only commenced in the 1970s (CIIC, 2008), and it is only now that a high level of concern in regard to the environmental impacts of modern civilisation is arising in China (Duggan, 2013). Because of this, the terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ are not in general or common use in China. Rather than adopt these terms, the Chinese government is aiming to address declining ecosystem health through a program of ‘ecological civilization’ (Jiang, 2013). While western agrarian civilisations lost their ecological identity through the industrial revolution, Chinese society maintained its ecological connection for thousands of years (Wittfogel, 1957). Because of this history, ‘ecological civilisation’ is much more meaningful to the Chinese people (Y. Li, 2013). It is likely to assist in strengthening resilience because it draws on the mental connection that Chinese people still have with the agrarian civilisation that existed before the 1970s, and it also avoids the baggage of the many contested meanings of sustainable development (Williams & Millington, 2004).

The strong ecological connection that Chinese people still hold can be readily seen in locations such as the now World Heritage-listed Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) (Error! Reference source not found.), which has influenced Chinese art and literature and been a cultural destination for more than a thousand years (B. Li, 747). In Shenzhen, Wutongshan (Wutong Mountain) and Lianhuashan (Lotus Hill) are similarly iconic, with most of Shenzhen’s 12 million residents having made the pilgrimage to the top of either or both (Shenzhen Daily, 2004, 2009). In Australia, Indigenous connections to land and place have been fractured through colonial dispossession (Gardiner-Garden, 1999). However, the Chinese people are China’s Indigenous people, and their links to land remain so strong that Shenzhen’s numerous ancient villages have persisted while the modern mega-city has been built around them (Error! Reference source not found., Error! Reference source not found.) (Ma, 2006). Many of the village buildings have changed, but the social structures and customs persist, including the traditional village committees (Error! Reference source not found.) (Ma, 2006). Because of their strong ecological and historical connection, it is understandable that Chinese people are currently experiencing a high degree of distress in regard to the decline of their environment. This ecological distress has been termed ‘solastalgia’ (Connor, Albrecht, Higginbotham, Freeman, & Smith, 2004).

3.3. Implementing ecological civilisation

More than half of the Chinese population now lives in cities (Yang, 2013). It would be very difficult to abandon these cities and return to the agrarian civilization that existed prior to the 1970s, so ways need to be found to implement ecological civilization in cities (Liu, 2012). This is challenging, because

very little is actually known about how cities function in relation to their environment (Batty, 2013; Bettencourt, 2013). It has been assumed that cities behave like natural systems, so that as they grow efficiencies will be achieved and resilience increased (Batty, 2013). However, new research is showing that this is not the case, and further research is needed to gain a comprehensive understanding of how cities relate to the environment (Bettencourt, 2013). A new approach that is consistent with emerging understandings of urban function is ‘urban metabolism’, which seeks to identify the inputs and outputs of cities and address the imbalances (Kenway, Pamminger, & Lant, 2013; Pincetl, Bunje, & Holmes, 2012).

Urbanisation has been driven by a narrow economic perspective, so to improve the ecological performance of cities it is desirable to include a wider range of disciplines in decision-making (Albrecht, Higginbotham, & Freeman, 2001). Participatory, polycentric and multilayered governance structures are also desirable (Lebel et al., 2006). One way such structures could be created in Shenzhen is by expanding the geographic area of coverage of existing villages committees and integrating them into the city government structures, and then giving these enhanced village committees the lead role in advancing ecological civilisation.

4. Conclusions

Urbanisation and industrialisation in Shenzhen have led to notable declines in biodiversity, air quality and water quality. Natural systems have been stressed to the point where resilience has been lost and vulnerability increased, with both water supply and food security at risk of catastrophic collapse. The Chinese government’s program of 'ecological civilisation' has the potential to reverse the declines and strengthen resilience. For 'ecological civilisation' to occur in Shenzhen, further research into the relationships between cities and their environment is needed. The achievement of 'ecological civilisation' in Shenzhen can be assisted by the 'urban metabolism' approach, where the inputs and outputs of cities are identified and the imbalances addressed. Governance changes should be made to give village committees the lead role in establishing ‘ecological civilisation’, and the committees should involve a wide range of disciplines in their decision-making.

5. Recommendations

1. The Chinese government’s program of ‘ecological civilisation’ has the potential to reverse declining ecosystem health and strengthen resilience. To facilitate ‘ecological civilisation’ in Shenzhen, further research is needed into the relationships between cities and their environment.

2. The achievement of 'ecological civilisation' in Shenzhen can be assisted by the 'urban metabolism' approach, where the inputs and outputs of cities are identified and the imbalances addressed.

3. Governance changes should be made to give village committees the lead role in establishing ‘ecological civilisation’ in Shenzhen, and the committees should involve a wide range of disciplines in their decision-making.

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