The Ministry of Natural Resources of the People's Republic of China recently announced the list of winners for the 2022 Natural Resources Science and Technology Award. Tsinghua University faculty member Yuan Lin received the Natural Resources Youth Science and Technology Award for the project titled "Traditional Human Settlements-Nature Coexistence Spatial Planning Pattern and Ecological Wisdom in the Dujiangyan Irrigation Region."

Yuan Lin presents the project at MIT.

The project focuses on the Dujiangyan Irrigation Region, an exemplary region in China's history that has undergone large-scale environmental transformation and maintained long-term harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. Ongoing research in this area has constructed an ecological wisdom research system for traditional water management areas as ecological units for human settlements. It has revealed a multi-dimensional coexistence pattern for traditional human settlements-nature spatial planning and construction. It proposed protection and restoration approaches based on the traditional ecological pattern of water, forest, field, and settlements. The research findings of this project have been continuously published from 2013 to 2023 and resulted in the publication of a representative monograph titled "Creating Ecological Regions: Indigenous Wisdom for Sustainable Living in the Dujiangyan Irrigation Region." The project's outcomes have deepened the scientific understanding of the ecological civilization value of classical traditional human settlements practices in China. These outcomes have supported the protection and restoration of the living environment in the Dujiangyan Irrigation Region and the planning of the Chengdu Park City program. It also inspired the development of territory spatial planning and related institutions under the ecological civilization framework.

The Natural Resources Science and Technology Award was officially established in 2022. It is organized by the Natural Resources Science and Technology Award Committee and is recommended by units in the field of natural resources and academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering who meet certain conditions. The award has two categories: the Natural Resources Science and Technology Progress Award and the Natural Resources Youth Science and Technology Award. The latter is presented to young scientific and technological scholars under the age of 45 who have made innovative and representative achievements in the relevant disciplines of natural resources. In the first year of the award, a total of 28 Natural Resources Youth Science and Technology Awards were selected, covering various disciplines and professional fields related to natural resources, such as geology, oceanography, land, ecology, and planning.

Associate Professor Yuan Lin

The award recipient, Yuan Lin, is an associate professor in the Department of Urban Planning at Tsinghua University's School of Architecture. In recent years, his academic research has primarily focused on the ecological wisdom of traditional human settlements, watershed land spatial planning and restoration, and the planning and construction of future garden cities. He has previously been awarded the Second Prize for Technological Progress by the Chinese Society of Landscape Architecture as the principal investigator, the Technology Award for Outstanding Scientific Papers by the Chinese Society of Urban Planning, and the Best Paper Award by the Asian Planning Schools Association (APSA). Additionally, he has been a core member of projects that received the First Prize for Technological Progress from the Chinese Society of Urban Planning. In 2022, he was selected as a young scientific and technological talent in the field of territory spatial planning by the Ministry of Natural Resources. In 2023, he received the inaugural Natural Resources Youth Science and Technology Award.