Ecology plays an important role in rural development
Ecological civilization is a newly added dimension in the socialist civilization system proposed by our country, following material civilization, spiritual civilization, political civilization, and social civilization. The building of a new countryside corresponds to the entire civilization system. Among these, production development and comfortable living correspond to material civilization, neat village appearance corresponds to ecological civilization, rural civility corresponds to political civilization and spiritual civilization, and democratic management corresponds to social civilization. Just as a prosperous countryside, a democratic countryside, and a harmonious countryside are important components of a prosperous China, a democratic China, and a harmonious China, a beautiful countryside is an important component of “Beautiful China.” The purpose of emphasizing this point is to explain that beautiful countryside construction is an upgraded version of the neat village appearance component of new countryside construction, rather than an upgraded version of the entire new countryside construction.
Due to the complexity of the qualities of beauty consciousness, the uncertainty of beauty factors, and the diversity of adaptations to the qualities of beauty consciousness, beauty has extremely rich and varied concrete manifestations. Therefore, the design of evaluation indicators for beautiful countryside construction should weaken consistency and emphasize uniqueness. Beautiful countryside construction should adopt ecological, systematic, and market-based methods as much as possible: First, the ecological method. Beautiful countryside construction should highlight natural beauty or ecological beauty, minimize traces of artificial carving, and make full use of ecological carrying capacity and environmental self-purification capacity. Rural production and living should not only meet ecological requirements, but also adopt ecological governance methods as much as possible, rather than end-of-pipe treatment methods. It is necessary to break out of the mistaken approach of transforming rural areas with urban concepts. For example, infrastructure such as tractor roads, forest roads, grazing roads, and pedestrian paths should, in accordance with ecological requirements, unify the hardening rate and water permeability rate. Second, the systematic method. It is necessary to unify ecological protection, ecological restoration, and ecological construction, unify ecological beauty and artificial beauty, and unify production, living, and ecology. For example, unify sewage treatment and rainwater resource utilization, and configure four types of enterprises - large-scale livestock and poultry farms, organic fertilizer manufacturing plants, livestock and poultry slaughter and processing plants, and feed plants - within the same park, so as to achieve the organic unity of pollution treatment and waste resource utilization. Third, the market-based method. Although beautiful countryside construction has the attribute of a public good, the government should not adopt a method of taking on everything. It should adopt methods such as bidding and guiding farmers and residents to participate to a greater extent.