The concept of ethical land use can be traced back to China's ancient thought of "harmony between man and nature". This idea is clearly expressed in Confucius, Mencius, Laozi and the Confucian classic Zhouyi. For example, Lao Tzu believes that Tao is the fundamental law that runs through nature and human society. In other words, although man and nature can be separated, their basic principles are unified. The realm of "harmony between heaven and earth and their virtues, harmony between the sun and the moon and their brightness, and harmony between the four seasons and their order" put forward in the Book of Changes is a moral norm with the highest goal of harmony between man and nature (Ye et al., 1999). The systematic expression of land ethics was put forward by American scholar Leopold (1987) in the 1940s. For the first time, he systematically discussed the issue of nature protection from the perspective of ethics. The land community method and the viewpoint of criticizing human beings for judging nature with economic value and requiring human beings to respect nature occupy a very important position in the development of environmental and ecological protection theory. At the beginning of a "Shaxian Yearbook", he issued a warning that is still very famous today: Don't take proper land use as the only economic problem.
According to Leopold, ethics is not only a philosophical concept, but also belongs to the category of social ecology. From the perspective of social ecology, ethics is a restriction on the freedom of behavior in struggle for existence. For a long time, the relationship between man and land belongs to the field of economics, and land is occupied as a kind of property, lacking a sense of moral responsibility for the land itself. Therefore, there is often a lack of ethical expression for the relationship between people and the land and the animals and plants growing on the land. Leopold's land ethics changed human beings from conquerors of land community to ordinary members of land community. This view holds that human beings should respect the same body-the whole land community.
Since 1970s, with the increasingly prominent problems of population, resources, environment and development, especially the increasingly strong voice of protecting and developing ecology, land ethics has developed greatly in depth and breadth. In the field of urban planning, the American Planning Association (APA) has specially formulated the ethical principles of planning, which shows that social ecological planning with ethics as the theme has attracted considerable attention. It is generally believed that planners have the obligation to "reconcile public demand and minimize the damage to the natural environment and natural resource system". In the late 1980s, the fields of afforestation and forestry also attached great importance to the ethical responsibility of land use, and thought that a social responsibility value system should be established to ensure the land ethics based on ecological and economic affordability. Soil conservationists, together with farmers, workers and other landowners, believe that the corrosiveness in agricultural development should be reduced through government and local planning, and special land use and management should be implemented in soil conservation areas. Some discussions on land ethics can also be found in other areas of resource management, including fishery management and conservation biology.
Beatley( 1994) published the monograph "Ethical Utilization of Land", which systematically discussed the land ethics. He believes that land is a basic ecological community, and people should care about and respect it from an ethical point of view, and make it recover as quickly and perfectly as possible.
In a word, the development of land ethics is both academic and emotional. It requires human beings not to regard land use as an economic problem completely, but to make a comprehensive investigation from the following three aspects: ① whether it is ethically correct; 2 whether it has aesthetic value; ③ Whether it is economically feasible.
(B) land ethics principles
Too many realistic land use decisions are only at the economic, technical, legal or political level, and few decisions directly include ethical choices. In addition to cognitive bias, it is more important to face the conflict of human interests. For example, whether a riverside land is used as wildlife habitat, tree-lined land or industrial land or residential land is faced with a dilemma of ethical choice. But in any case, from the perspective of sustainable development, human beings must follow the following basic ethical principles in the process of land use (Pan Jiahua,1997; Wu Cifang et al, 200 1).
1. The principle of maximizing public interests
From an ethical point of view, land use must seek the maximization of public interests or social welfare, and any land use behavior that ignores public interests and welfare is immoral. The utilitarian goal of land use must be bound by moral responsibility. Wise and reasonable land use requires transcending narrow economic categories and pursuing the maximization of public interests.
2. The principle of distributive justice
This principle includes two meanings. First, when there is a conflict of interest between human beings and living things in resource allocation, all parties to the conflict should allocate and enjoy natural resources as equally as possible, such as dividing permanent environment and public protection areas, implementing environmental integration planning, crop rotation, and taking turns hunting, so as to ensure the fair distribution between human beings and living things. Secondly, because the decision of land use strongly affects the distribution and enjoyment of social resources and human internal housing, work, education, parks, entertainment, health and medical services, the distribution of land resources requires ensuring that everyone reaches at least the lowest basic social consumption level. Otherwise, land use decision-making is obviously immoral.
3. The principle of minimum environmental damage
This principle requires that human beings have the obligation to protect the natural environment for themselves and other life forms when making land use decisions. The ethical responsibility of land use shows that land use policy should tend to narrow the scope of human footprint. It must be very clear that human beings cannot survive without the basic functions provided by terrestrial ecosystems. Land owners have no basic right to abuse the natural structure and characteristics of land. In the process of land use, the scheme with the least adverse impact on the environment must be adopted.
4. Intergenerational obligation principle
Land ethics holds that land use has important obligations to future generations. Humans have no right to destroy important or irreplaceable cultural and historical resources. All land use must comprehensively consider the results of its long-term accumulation, and also require us to abandon all land use models that may gradually weaken the interests of the next generation. According to the ethical viewpoint of land use, paternalism in land use should be avoided, and social risk assessment should be replaced by personal preference, which will harm the interests of generations.
5. Re-establish the principle of fairness
In the process of land development and utilization, it is almost impossible to completely avoid some harm to biology and environment. If people's behavior conforms to the concept of caring for land and respecting nature, we must find ways to compensate habitat through land ecological reconstruction and environmental restoration. For example, land ecological environment can be restored through land reclamation and land consolidation.
(C) the basic theoretical issues of land ethics
As a new discipline, land ethics has its relatively independent universal essence and basic theoretical problems. It is true that the basic theoretical problems of the discipline vary with the perspective of the cognitive subject. This is just the author's judgment from the perspective of social ecology.
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According to the analysis in the last section, human beings should establish a new moral concept in the process of using land. According to the viewpoint of social ecology, it can be called "respecting nature" (Taylor, 1986), which requires that the will and purpose of individuals or groups should not damage the natural ecosystem in the process of land use. In other words, the purpose of people's land use behavior must be an ethically binding pursuit. The core content of respecting nature in land ethics should include the following four aspects: ① Human beings are not inherently superior to other creatures, and everyone is a member of the earth's life group. In fact, although human beings have many skills that other creatures don't have, their functions such as flight of birds and photosynthesis of green plants are far behind. It can almost be said that living things can continue without human beings, but human beings cannot survive without living things. ② People and land together form an interdependent organic whole. Land provides 98% of human food and is the basic support system for human survival and development. Without land, mankind will not be able to continue. On the other hand, through the rational use and careful cultivation of land, human beings make the land ecosystem evolve to a higher stage. (3) Each land use mode has its most suitable specific natural environment. A land use mode can be regarded as a life perception center, which has its own suitable environment and its behavior organization is carried out around this environment. Humans must cherish and protect this habitat. ④ Land use has all life forms of land. The rights and obligations of human beings to the animals and plants on the land come from a certain moral relationship between human beings and the land. The existence of land is not simply the object of human development and utilization, nor can the creatures on the land be regarded as the source of utilization and consumption. On the contrary, the land ecological community and its members in the process of land use deserve our moral attention and consideration. At present, the theoretical problem facing mankind is that what way, what degree and what way of land development and utilization can be called respect for nature.
2. Value judgment
Because most members of terrestrial communities have no ordinary market economic value, the species with real economic use in the market may be less than 5% of the total number of organisms; These so-called species with no economic value are members of terrestrial biological communities, and the stability of terrestrial ecosystems depends on their integrity. Under the guidance of ethical thought, it is very difficult to judge whether the value of land is human-centered or biological-centered, which is directly related to the establishment of land ethical logic.
Even from the people-oriented point of view, people generally agree that the value of land includes its economic value, social value and ecological value. Some rough estimates show that the social and ecological value of land is huge, which can exceed 9 ~ 10 times of economic value. However, it is very difficult to scientifically evaluate the social and ecological value of land. This reality that the social value and ecological value of land are difficult to reflect will inevitably cast a shadow over the establishment of land ethics.
According to the viewpoint of bioethics, people, like other creatures, are all members of life groups on the earth. In this sense, all living things are equal. In the process of land development and utilization, human beings often cause damage to ecosystems, species and the environment, which may be fatal to some creatures and the value loss is immeasurable. However, it is difficult to judge the value of this loss, which makes human beings fall into an ethical dilemma.
3. Health standards
A kind of land ethics reflects a kind of social ecological significance. This in turn shows that human beings should have a sense of responsibility for land health (Pan Jiahua, 1997). In other words, when land use has not caused harm to land health, it is appropriate and moral from an ethical point of view, otherwise it is not allowed. Now people are faced with the problem of how to choose the standard of land hygiene. This involves not only the values of individuals and groups, but also the expected ability and technical level of human beings to land health, and more importantly, the accounting of human interests.
Since 1994, the research on land quality index system (LQIS) aimed at protecting land health and establishing land health standards has been determined as the priority research project by several international organizations which are most active in the field of land science, such as the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). CGIAP, CIESIN, ISRIC, USDA and WRI also participated in some work. However, due to the complexity of land health problems, the research on land health standards has not made substantial progress at present (Pier et al., 1995).
4. Moral judgment
Moral judgments about land use are ultimately made by individuals, but they will occur in different societies, governments or groups. Therefore, individuals are faced with moral judgments about land use in many classes and in many different social uses or positions. In the process of land use, moral judgment involves three aspects: ① spatiality. People have the obligation to consider the impact of a land use mode on different spatial scales, such as neighboring plots, local areas, countries and even the world, especially on the interests and health of life, and even on the planet, because unreasonable land use will lead to changes in the global climate and water cycle. ② Temporal side. Many land uses have obviously affected the ecological way of life in the future, and human beings have the responsibility to consider the land use results after 50 years, 100 years or, as Indians say, after the seventh generation. ③ Other kinds of life. When formulating land use policies, the category of morality must include all life forms, whether emotional or not, and land use should reflect moral respect for all life forms.
5. Social equity
The social justice theory of land ethics originates from the theory of justice. It was put forward by British scholar Rawls in 1970s. From a philosophical point of view, Rawls examines the "life plan" chosen by a rational person without knowing his social status or under the veil of ignorance (Pan Jiahua, 1997). Social equity in land ethics includes two meanings:
(1) Equity of land resource distribution. As a rational social choice or ethical norm, every member of society should and has the responsibility to give the same generation the same rights and opportunities to develop and utilize land resources, that is, to safeguard intergenerational equity. At the same time, contemporary people have the obligation to protect land resources, so that our future generations can enjoy the benefits they deserve from these land resources equally with us, that is, to safeguard intergenerational equity.
(2) Fairness of land use decision. The formulation or decision-making process of land use policy is inevitably political. They include conflicts between different viewpoints and interests, which will lead to winners and losers. Ethical land use decisions must recognize and maintain the most basic standards of political equality; In land use decision-making, everyone in society is morally and politically equal. It requires the government to consider all desirable land use viewpoints fairly, comprehensively and in a balanced way when formulating land use policies.
(D) land ethics and farmland protection
Major environmental and ecological problems, such as soil erosion, land desertification, grassland degradation, land pollution, biodiversity loss and tropical forest degradation, are largely caused by improper land use, and the deep-seated factor is that people lack cultural genes of land ethics. Land ethics culture can break through the traditional thinking mode of land use to a certain extent, re-recognize land with a rational perspective and a universal sense of historical responsibility, respect the ecological function of land, and effectively protect the land ecosystem necessary for human survival.
From the perspective of land ethics, the protection of cultivated land is to seek a harmonious state between man and land. The protection based on economic motives in the traditional concept cannot achieve harmony. If only economic reasons are emphasized, the economic value of agricultural land is much lower than that of urban land, which is also the motivation for mayors to turn agricultural land into market land at this stage. 1 mu of farmland net income may be only a few hundred yuan, in most cases will not exceed 1 10,000 yuan; Once agricultural land is converted into market land, its value may reach several million yuan per mu, which is hundreds or even tens of thousands of times the value of agricultural land. It can be seen that the agricultural land protection system based solely on economic self-interest will focus on economic benefits, and it is easy to ignore or even eventually exclude the social and ecological values of agricultural land. Social value is an indispensable element to ensure the orderly operation of the social system, and ecological value is an indispensable element to ensure the normal operation of the ecosystem. Cultivated land protection based on land ethics emphasizes human ethical self-discipline. It requires that in a society, land use should not be completely regarded as an economic issue. There are three problems to be investigated in land use: ① whether it violates ethical norms; 2 whether it has aesthetic value; ③ Whether it is economically acceptable. If the whole society can fully understand the value of land, form and accept the ethical norms of respecting the land community, regard cultivated land protection as a conscious act under ethical constraints, and regard cultivated land as an important heritage of mankind, then cultivated land protection will be more effective and sustainable.
(e) Introducing ethics into farmland consolidation design
Farmland consolidation refers to the technical and economic process of comprehensively improving fields, water, roads, forests and villages in a certain area, adjusting land relations, optimizing land use structure, improving production and living conditions and improving land utilization rate and output rate according to the overall land use planning and the principle of sustainable utilization. Its main contents are as follows: first, adjust the structure of agricultural land and standardize the physical form of plots; The second is to level the land and improve the soil; Third, build roads and ditches in an all-round way; The fourth is to merge rural residential areas; Fifth, the reclamation of abandoned land; Sixth, adjust land ownership; Seventh, improve the agricultural production environment and maintain the ecological balance of land. Cultivated land consolidation is an effective way to improve the comprehensive productivity of cultivated land and an important measure to protect cultivated land resources. Since the revision and implementation of the Land Management Law of the People's Republic of China from 65438 to 0998, large-scale farmland consolidation has flourished in China. After eight years of hard work, land consolidation has made great progress and achieved remarkable results. By the end of 2006, the national * * * has allocated 300 billion yuan for land consolidation, with more than 3,000 projects and 34.07 million mu of supplementary cultivated land, which has effectively promoted the protection of agricultural land resources.
However, farmland consolidation is, after all, a strong human disturbance to farmland ecosystem. It involves not only the physical and chemical properties of soil, the spatial structure and ecological environment of land use, but also the social, economic and technological development of this area. This is an extremely complex natural, social and ecological system engineering. The practice of farmland consolidation also shows another effect: inappropriate land consolidation methods and technical measures will reduce the stability of farmland ecosystem, have potential adverse effects on farmland productivity and lead to land degradation. For example, improper landfill leads to the decrease of flood discharge capacity of land, the adjustment of land use structure leads to the decrease of biodiversity, and the silt cover of low-lying land pollutes farmland. Therefore, introducing the concept and thought of land ethics into the design of farmland consolidation plays a very important role in the sustainable development of farmland consolidation and farmland protection.
1. Structural design of ecological protection farmland consolidation
From the perspective of land ethics, it is necessary to pay attention to the ecological environment, preserve and reorganize some landscape elements (such as shrubs and flaky biological communities), and establish an eco-agricultural system that is reasonably combined according to the bio-ecological characteristics of various biological groups and the biological relationship between organisms. The system can make each biological group in different niches have their own place in the system, complement each other, make better use of solar energy, water and mineral nutrients, and establish a multi-level and multi-sequence industrial structure in space, thus obtaining higher economic and ecological benefits. According to different biological types and habitats, the structural design of farmland consolidation can be carried out in the following two ways.
Design of (1) strip structure
Strip structure includes strip structure and strip structure. The size of the strip structure sample plot should be kept at about 400 m ~ 600 m in length and no more than 150 m ~ 200 m in width, which is mainly manifested in hedges, shelterbelts, turf (belts), fences, ditches, roads, crop boundaries and other structures, and plays an important role in maintaining more species in farmland. In general, the width of belt structure should be 10m~30m ~ 30m. This structure should include scattered trees, shrubs, small ponds and other composite structures, which can provide a buffer habitat for species.
(2) Island structure
Island structure includes internal island structure and external island structure. Among them, the inner island structure is a block structure type suitable for a large area, and its area is usually not less than 40 ~ 50 hm 2. The goal of establishing this internal landscape structure is to protect special plots in farmland, such as small depressions, water banks, erosion ditches and other special habitats, from the influence of strong agricultural production activities such as fertilization and pesticide use. In addition, it also includes a big island consisting of vegetable gardens, woodlands and residential areas. Outer island structure is a kind of block structure that separates the unused ecosystem (such as mowing grass). ) or unused ecosystems (such as forests, etc.). ) comes from the farmland ecosystem. Its purpose is to protect species in pure natural environment on the one hand, and to protect species in open habitat on the other hand, so that they are not affected by fertilization and pesticide use in agricultural activities.
2. Eco-environmental road design
Roads in the process of farmland consolidation include main roads, branch roads, field roads and production roads. Trunk roads and feeder roads serve rural areas and agriculture, connecting villages and towns. In villages with large traffic flow, cement or gravel should be paved. Field roads and production roads mainly serve agricultural production, and their quantity is large, which also has great influence on farmland ecological environment. Therefore, the design mode of ecological, environmental and economical field roads should be mainly paved with earth materials, supplemented by stone materials, and the design of production roads should adopt earth materials that are conducive to the survival of flowers and plants, so as to make them become the habitat of wild animals and plants and promote species diversity.
3. Eco-environmental conservation-oriented river ditch design
The design of eco-environmental protection ditches should keep the original natural features of the river as much as possible, reduce artificial transformation and plant more trees on both sides of the river; Retain a certain number and area of ditches, ponds and low-lying land, leave suitable habitats and space environment for the survival and reproduction of wild plants, and promote the sustainable development of ecology. Ditches should be designed with gentle slopes and paved with natural materials to reduce the ecological impact caused by water level changes. If possible, a compound section should be designed, and a small curved channel should be laid at the bottom of the ditch to accommodate the water flow at low water level and provide habitats for animals and plants in the ditch at low water level; Or, the bottom is designed as a groove with certain ups and downs to stabilize the water temperature and provide a variety of habitats at the bottom of the groove, so that the creatures at the bottom of the groove can live forever.
The degradation of agricultural land quality is related to immoral land use policy and engineering design. Adhering to the principle of pursuing advantages and avoiding disadvantages in rural land consolidation design is the expression of respecting the relationship between man and nature and ecological environment, and is the premise of protecting biodiversity, maintaining the ecological balance of the whole region and developing and utilizing resources. Therefore, on the basis of strengthening the study of land metabolism mechanism and human intervention, the harm caused by farmland consolidation should be monitored dynamically. In order to grasp the situation in time and make adjustments to prevent the further expansion of the harm. The introduction of land use ethics provides a new mode of thinking for rural land consolidation and changes the land use state of "economy determines everything". Its appearance is the need of social and economic development, and it is also the progress of people's understanding of landscape structure and function. Its introduction is of great significance for coordinating the relationship between man and land, sustainable development and ecological environment protection.