稻作梯田农业文化遗产保护研究综述

A review of conservation of rice terraces as agricultural heritage systems

梯田是人类依山势就地利挖掘而成的山地农业生产系统,许多梯田至今仍发挥着生产功能,展现了人类适应与利用自然的智慧,其包含的生产技术、农业管理经验和传统农业知识,对农业的可持续发展具有重要的启示和借鉴意义,既是典型的山地生态农业模式,也是杰出的生态与文化景观,更是弥足珍贵的农业文化遗产。其中,稻作梯田为其极具代表性的重要类型。在工业化和城市化快速发展的背景下,由于无法使用机械化作业,稻作梯田劳动强度大、生产效率低的劣势愈加突出。一些地方还因为旅游业的不合理发展,引发了梯田农业系统生态环境和社会文化等方面的诸多问题,甚至因改种旱作或抛荒造成了梯田的垮塌。稻作梯田保护和可持续发展问题,引起了不同学科学者越来越多的关注。本文在系统收集国内外稻作梯田保护研究文献的基础上,从保护对象、保护措施、主要问题及原因等角度进行了分析。研究表明,1)稻作梯田的保护对象包括梯田景观、梯田生态和梯田文化3个部分。其中,梯田景观包括梯田结构、水源涵养林、农田灌溉系统和村落;梯田生态包括传统作物品种、生物多样性、农田环境质量和传统小农复合经营模式;梯田文化则包括居民服饰、建筑物等物质文化,以及歌舞、节庆等精神文化和水资源管理、森林管理等制度文化构成的非物质文化。2)造成稻作梯田景观破坏、环境污染和生物多样性减少、传统文化面临失传等问题的主要原因在于,现代科技的冲击、市场需求的驱动、传统农业比较效益低和替代性产业发展不合理等。3)稻作梯田的主要保护措施包括:适度的产业发展、构建和完善保护管理制度和机制、加强科学研究等。未来稻作梯田保护研究,应在强调多学科综合研究的基础上,重点放在梯田系统退化的内在与外在因素、长期监测与动态评估、适宜的产业发展模式与途径和典型案例跟踪及评估等方面。

Terraces are old agricultural field systems created by the ancestors according to the local terrain and which still perform their production function today. These land use systems clearly show the wisdom and abilities of human adapting and taking advantages of the natural environment. Nowadays, the tillage and management experiences and traditional agricultural knowledge on terrace systems can offer important insights and references for the sustainable development of modern agriculture. With industrialization and urbanization, however, the limitations of terrace agriculture in production efficiency are more and more obvious, which has led to a series of natural and man-made environmental and societal problems due to the terrain limits for using farm machines and overwhelming development of tourism. These negative effects have led to the near collapse of terrace agriculture. Thus, a series of research projects on the protection of terrace agriculture have been conducted. This paper reviewed most available works on the protection of rice terraces in three aspects, including protected objects, existing problems and causes, and protective measures. The protected objects were mainly the landscapes, ecosystem services and social cultures in rice terrace areas. The protected landscape elements included terrace structures, water conservation forests, farm irrigation systems and villages. The key protected objects in the ecosystems covered traditional crop varieties, biodiversity, environmental quality of terraces and the comprehensive agricultural patterns. The protected social culture mainly consisted of material cultures（e.g., traditional costumes and old buildings）, spiritual cultures（e.g., ethnic songs and dances and traditional festivals）, and system cultures（e.g., management of water resources and forests）. The challenges facing rice terrace systems contained landscape destruction, environmental pollution, loss of biodiversity and disappearance of traditional cultures. These challenges were primarily caused by the impacts of modern science and technology, market demands, low comparative advantages of traditional agriculture and unscientific industrial development. As to these challenges, many protective measures need to be implemented. They were grouped into three types： reasonable industrial development, building institutions and protective management mechanisms, and developing scientific research. In the future, studies on rice terrace conservation should focus on mechanisms of key terrace issues, case studies, comprehensive subject researches, long-term observation and industrial development researches.