Zhang Lei, County Magistrate of Loufan County, Shanxi Province
　　At present, environmental issues have become one of the most important and most closely watched livelihood concerns. The public is increasingly demanding clean water, fresh air, safe food, and a beautiful environment, and the ecological environment is playing an ever more prominent role in people's sense of well-being. At the same time, however, environmental protection is also a systemic and long-term development issue involving a fundamental transformation of production methods, lifestyles, and values, and it cannot be achieved overnight.

For economically underdeveloped and ecologically fragile regions, the first challenge in building an ecological civilization is how to resolve the dilemma between ecological protection and economic development. Take Loufan County in Shanxi as an example. As the location of the Fenhe Reservoir, an important water supply source, it provides nearly half of Taiyuan's drinking water every day and also bears the important responsibility of supplying clean water to the middle and lower reaches of the Fenhe River. Protecting the water source and protecting the ecology is an unshirkable duty. But after implementing the strictest environmental access system and water resource protection system, Loufan encountered the awkward situation of finding it difficult to balance ecological construction and water source protection with industrial transformation and the people's efforts to escape poverty and become better off.

Prohibited development zones and restricted development zones account for 55.32 percent of the county's total area, and tens of millions of tons of coal, iron, and other mineral resources have stopped being developed in order to give way to ecological protection. With the determination to cut off one's own arm, we shut down 150 polluting enterprises, closed 96 tailings ponds, shut down and phased out 245 enterprises with serious pollution, outdated technology, and resource waste, dismantled and cleaned up 127 polluted facilities and pieces of equipment, and cut off industrial pollution sources.

But ecological protection alone is not enough; the public will still not accept delayed development. "A poor county undertaking big things, a small county bearing big responsibilities"—how should this anxiety be resolved? Where is the room for industrial transformation?

Loufan has formulated a countywide "spatial development and protection plan" to create a rational and orderly pattern of spatial development and protection. In addition to developing circular agriculture and ecotourism, Loufan also follows the principles of "ecological development, protective development, and moderate development" to control ecological damage during mineral resource extraction and actively optimize and upgrade industrial enterprises, forming an ecological, intensive, and efficient production model.

To resolve the "dilemma," reform of systems and mechanisms is the top priority. Following the principles of "whoever protects benefits," "whoever improves benefits," and "whoever contributes more benefits more," we have established a regional ecological compensation mechanism linked by water source protection and ecological function protection. At the same time, we have set up a provincial-level drinking water source protection zone management agency matching water source protection and established a multi-level investment mechanism for drinking water source protection led by provincial finance and supplemented by municipal and county finance.

We have also actively developed the "enclave economy" and improved supporting policies for ecological industries. Ecological beneficiaries fund the construction of ecological compensation support development zones, guide the county's labor force toward employment, and carry out ecological relocation, providing new opportunities for local people to escape poverty and become better off and for poverty alleviation through ecological relocation. Next, Loufan will firmly seize the opportunity of Shanxi being the country's only comprehensive reform pilot zone for resource-based regions, actively strive to become a national pilot demonstration zone for ecological civilization, and embark on a path of positive interaction between the ecological economy and sustainable regional economic development.