Chinese Second National Permaculture Conference in Shenzhen
About 150 Chinese permaculturists attended the conference in this remarkable permaculture village/town designed in every detail from permaculture design principles and methods. It was a delightful and innovative site for the conference. Participants come from all over China to attend.
It was evident from the speakers that permaculture is thriving and spreading fast in China.
China is deploying permaculture “at scale” to redesign ecological systems and infrastructure for adaptive resilience.
Yangtze Delta Permaculture Challenges
Being flat, highly productive with deposited soils and also canals, the world’s deltas will be challenged by global warming. Preparatory work has been done for the Yangtze Delta. There are three serious threats:
- Water invasion
- Coastal erosion
- Saltwater intrusion
The Yangtze Delta is possibly only viable for about the next 100 years because the estimated rise in the ocean by that time would cover it. It has a short-term but no long-term future. How to make best permaculture design decisions under these conditions is challenging. 127 million people live there and it also produces huge amounts of food for China.
Originally all deltas in the world would have been enormous buffering wetlands which over the millennia have been cleared and drained. Nature constantly tries to return them to their original state which was better for climate and wildlife. In fact, although impractical, allowing and assisting the region to return to wetlands would be the most protective and sustainable response to global warming and coastal inundation. Wetlands protect and buffer big flows of water.
Working in a huge Delta is a disturbing experience and a challenge for permaculture designers with its flat land, and waters threatened by rising seas and global warming: incursion of brackish waters and pollution of canals; altogether a new landscape for permaculture designers to consider water management and hydration. How to catch and store water in what is virtually wetlands, presents enormous challenges.
The Delta living and agriculture, comprising a multitude of canals which were once used for most transport, shows lack of understanding of how nature cleans water. The canals are full of rubbish and very polluted. By simply developing a fringe of plants known as macrophytes along all the canals to extract pollutants as water moves from land to canal would assist enormously. There is work to be done here.
Delta Ecological Protection
Environmental protection design in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) focuses on integrating regional ecological security patterns, sustainable urban-rural development, and high-tech monitoring. Key features include constructing ecological corridors, using “sponge city” techniques, restoring water networks through “polders” (dykes/berms), implementing strict “ecological red lines,” and advancing zero-carbon, climate-responsive architectural designs to ensure sustainable development.
Shanghai
The Shanghai Centre of Creativity and Innovation under Wei Min is part of a team working on this, and the greater delta region. Valuable work has been done in short-term on wetlands in the region with remarkable increase in bird numbers and other wetland species. This is one of its original ecosystems. Wetlands protect and buffer big flows of water.
In Shanghai, renewable energy is visible everywhere. Streets are cleaner, quieter and greener than I have seen in Australia and people are proud of their progress. China jumped from bicycles to electric bicycles in a wide range of types and styles – it seems there is the right one for each person. Parking is easy. In this way, much of the city has avoided the challenging impacts of noise, and pollution caused by fossil fuels. By moving from bicycles to electric bicycles, they omitted the stage in transport innovation of every citizen owning a petrol or diesel driven car.
As one of the world’s great cities, Shanghai has many huge modern buildings and the question arises what is to be done with the fill from excavation of underground areas used for parking and air conditioning. This problem is one that city designers are working with.
Town planning in Shanghai placed in the centre of Creativity and Innovation is outstanding. Among other activities they have listed and mapped all the Community gardens in Shanghai and also in China and also map their progress and changes. The local gardens in Shanghai are a result of reclaiming part of a formerly wide street. Gardens along the edges of the roads gave a sense of enclosure for pedestrians, and double planting of street trees with their overhead canopy gave protection. A public noise monitor records and shows street noise in decibels.
Sponge Cities in China
The number of Chinese cities affected by floods has more than doubled since 2008.
Why? Concrete jungles are mazes of impermeable surfaces that don’t absorb water, which exacerbates flooding and runoff during storms. This dirty water gets funnelled into rivers and oceans, harming wildlife and reducing the supply available to city residents. For highly populated cities like Shenzhen, both improperly managed storm water runoff and water shortages during extreme droughts jeopardize human access to fresh water.
TNC is collaborating with city officials to transform Shenzhen into an innovative, cost-effective “sponge city.” By planting more vegetation all around the city—on roofs, along sidewalks and in parks—we are helping the city become a sponge that retains and filters rainwater, sustaining a clean supply for expanding communities and making Shenzhen itself a safer and healthier place to live.
The sponge city project works at three levels:
- Public education campaign to communicate the value of urban nature to the lives of Shenzhen residents;
- Pilot projects that demonstrate best practices across a range of sites, such as using permeable building materials for new buildings and establishing a rooftop garden in Gangxia urban village;
- Finance and policy research to assure that sponge cities are taking advantage of the latest innovations.
A Permaculture-Designed Neighbourhood in Shenzhen
Sponge cities are committed to using natural infrastructure for stormwater management. Shenzhen — a pioneer city in terms of economy, manufacturing, governance and its “smart city” status — is at the forefront of becoming more sustainable and liveable.
Shenzhen’s environmental design focuses on transforming a dense, high-tech metropolis into an ecological “sponge city” that integrates nature with urban infrastructure. Key initiatives include massive electric vehicle (EV) adoption, coastal mangrove protection, and sustainable architecture. The city prioritizes sustainable development through green construction, waste-to-energy projects, and flood-resilient landscaping.
The Permaculture Conference in Shenzhen was held in a permaculture designed neighbourhood of the city. It was exceptional in its water management, solar passive designs, people movement and natural furnishings.
By Rowe Morrow, March 2025
Further reading: What is China’s Shenzhen model for low-carbon transition in cities? (Carbon Brief)
You must be logged in to post a comment.