Two-Decade Evolution and Prospect of Beijing Ecological Conservation Area Construction

The Beijing Ecological Conservation Area is a specialized functional region with water source conservation and ecological barrier construction as its primary tasks, offering ecological security guarantee and ecological service support for the overall development of the capital. Reviewing the development process, diagnosing the problem in the new phase, and looking forward to the future development directions are of great significance for realizing the modern-development-demonstration goals of improving the water quality of the construction basin, rural industrial transformation, and the value of the "Two Mountains" concept. Temporally, the construction of the Beijing Ecological Conservation Area has undergone three stages: differential transformation, optimization and upgrading, and modern green development. Spatially, the interactions and games among administrative regions of different scales have achieved the coordination task objectives and development paths. Over the past two decades, the construction of the Beijing Ecological Conservation Area has achieved fruitful results. The ecological quality of the conservation area has been improved, the land-use structure and industrial structures have been optimized, the living quality of rural residents has been enhanced, and the overall benefits of Beijing and even the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has become prominent. However, in terms of ecosystem resilience, residents' absolute income, industrial infrastructure, market participation in ecological value realization, and governance system there are still significant development challenges. Looking forward, to systematically promote the Beijing Ecological Conservation Area towards higher efficiency, higher level, and higher quality, efforts should be made in strengthening ecological protection with technology, creating a market-oriented enterprise growth environment, exploiting the advantages of regional characteristic industries, guiding the active participation of the public, optimizing the supervision and evaluation systems, and expanding international exchanges and cooperation.