Balancing socioeconomic development with ecological conservation towards rural sustainability: a case study in semiarid rural China

Despite the dramatic progress in poverty reduction, China‘s vast rural areas of backwardness, environmental degradation and low labour productivity are a long-standing challenge to achieve common prosperity and sustainable development. Finding a balance between ecological conservation and socioeconomic development is a solution. However, previous studies have largely neglected the concept. Here, we proposed a framework that integrates the ecological environment and socioeconomic wellbeing via farm management and the use of ecosystem services (ES) to assess rural sustainability and explore a suitable balance and pathways from the perspective of the human dimension. Taking Yan’he Township in China’s Loess Plateau as an example, a clustering analysis was performed to group farm households based on their behaviour in cropping, land rental, and off-farm work. A composite index was built to assess rural sustainability at the farm household level, while a structural equation model was performed to estimate the effect of land-use practices on rural sustainability and explore adequate farm management and policy interventions. The results show that households with different farm management and land-use strategies had divergent agricultural performance, use of ES, and environmental and wellbeing outcomes. Increasing legume cropping with conservation approaches (e.g., rotation) and extended irrigation while encouraging migrant work with ensured equal urban-rural social welfare and property rights may contribute to balancing socioeconomic development with ecological conservation. The findings indicate that both interventionist policies and independent market support are vital for individual and community capacity building and public infrastructure development to stimulate agricultural adaptation and rural transformation towards sustainability.