Rural system sustainability evaluation based on emergy analysis: An empirical study of 321 villages in China

The deterioration of the rural ecosystem, the poverty of population, and the low well-being of farmers have brought great challenges to the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Assessing the current situation of rural sustainable development and identifying limiting factors are critical to sustainable development of rural areas. This study evaluates rural sustainability of 321 villages in China based on emergy analysis. Then, random forest has been employed to determine the limiting factors of villages with different sustainable development levels. The results show that the current level of sustainable development in Chinese rural areas is relatively low (from 0.0040 to 9.5468), showing the trend of gradual increase in rural sustainability from the east to the west. There is a trade-off relationship between social-economic development and the ecological environment, resulting from only 32% of villages are high Emergy Yield Rate and low Environmental Loading Ratio. High-sustainability villages are rich in natural resources and higher metabolic efficiency but poor in people's living, indicating that the natural capital needs to be excavated to improve economic levels and social well-being in the future. Low-sustainability villages have better human well-being due to faster economic development, but unbalanced external inputs and outputs result in low metabolic efficiency and high environmental pressure. Precipitation, agricultural materials input, and people living consumption are the main driving factors for rural sustainability. It is suggested to introduce effective policies to increase economic measures and human well-being for high-sustainability villages, and appropriately decrease external purchasing such as fertilizer and pesticides for low-sustainability villages to make progress in rural sustainable development and Chinese Rural Revitalization.