Farmers’ Seeds: The Key to Agroecology

During the last four decades of unprecedented economic growth, hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens have been taken out of poverty and achieved a middle-class standard of living. Yet the toll on the environment has been immense, as it was in Western countries during their industrialization. China is now pioneering a number of pilot projects on the local and regional levels in an attempt to harmonize social, economic, and ecological development, one of which is the concept of the “ecological bank”. In this interview, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Sun Wei speaks with Cui Li, a professor at the School of Tourism Science at the Beijing International Studies University, about the concept and China’s broader attempt to reconcile economic growth with the preservation and even enhancement of the ecosystem as a whole.