Perceiving drought : large-scale impacts of eucalyptus and regional economic and environmental sustainability

Abstract

After 20 century, eucalyptus have become predominate species in the plantation area in the coastal area, Guangxi province, China. After 2008, great drought happened in Guangxi, which make people began to pay attention to the large area of eucalyptus plantation in the coastal area. Mainstream media spread the idea that eucalyptus planation cause the ecological disaster and threat the local ecology system that making local people get into the panic. NGO do the researches to illustrate the problem caused by the planation and find out lots of ideas from main media is not precisely. People misunderstand the eucalyptus planation and restricted the eucalyptus is unreasonable. The ecological problem caused by the planation is not the fault of the eucalyptus itself, but the fault of the management of the planation. This project is going to study the impact of the eucalyptus planation, the research from NGO and design a new typology for the plantation that achieve the regional economic and environmental sustainability of the planation in view of Landscape architects. This project is going to use exiting and simple technology that is easier accepted by the local people. Buffer zone and Livestock industries are used to create a typology of planation that could overcome existing weakness of existing plantation and increase income of the villagers at the same time. New policy, especially subsidy system is set up to help the implement of the new typology. In the whole project, planation is not regarded as a individual project but a part of the system to achieve sustainability.