Landscape change and the sustainable development strategy of different types of ethnic villages driven by the grain for Green Program

The Grain for Green Program (GGP) is an important ecological project in China that was implemented to tackle serious soil erosion and forest loss for sustainable development. Investigating landscape change is an efficient way to monitor and assess the implementation of GGP. In this paper, 180 ethnic villages, including 36 Miao and Dong (MD) villages with combined populations of Miao people and Dong people, 65 Dong villages, and 79 Miao villages in Qiandongnan Prefecture were selected to investigate the influence of GGP on ethnic villages by evaluating the landscape changes before and after the implementation of the GGP within 1-km and 2-km distance buffers around ethnic villages. The results show that the GGP has more significant positive impacts on reforestation around Miao villages than Dong villages and MD villages because Miao villages are mostly located in higher and steeper areas, which are the focus of the GGP. Based on the analysis, a continuation of the GGP in Qiandongnan Prefecture is recommended, as it can incentivize the recovery of forest cover in steeper slopes. More attention should now be paid to the Dong villages and MD villages, which were not previously a focus of the GGP

China’s Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program: A systematic review of the socioeconomic and environmental effects

Background Farming on sloping lands has historically led to forest loss and degradation in China which, coupled with timber extraction activities, was deemed responsible for catastrophic flooding events in the late 1990s. These events led to the introduction of forest policies targeting ecological conservation and rural development in China, a process epitomized by the launch of the Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program (CCFP) in 1999. Methods/design This systematic review responds to the question: What environmental and socioeconomic effects has the Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program had on land resources and human populations during its first 15 years? Following the published protocol, we searched for English language studies published between 1999 and 2014, and screened them for relevance and eligibility in two stages (titles and abstracts followed by full texts), after which they were further assessed for potential sources of bias (study quality assessment) before data extraction and analyses. Forty three studies were identified as meeting our inclusion and quality criteria following screening of 879 search results, indicating an overall lack of high quality studies with primary data on the impacts of CCFP. Eighty per cent of county-level case studies were conducted in only four provinces, and 13 of the 25 provinces where the CCFP is implemented are not represented by these county-level cases in the review. The review also includes, however, four national level studies covering 20 provinces and seven regional level studies, each covering several provinces. The majority of studies were published after 2009 and evaluated impacts within the first five years of CCFP implementation, such that the long term impacts of the program remain open for further investigation. Results The skewed temporal and geographic distribution of studies limits the generalizability of the results, though the evidence base confirms a substantial increase in forest cover and associated carbon stocks linked to reallocation of sloping agricultural land to forest. To some degree, soil erosion has been controlled and flood risk reduced at local scales. Meanwhile household incomes have increased and rural employment has readjusted towards off-farm sectors. However, studies also indicate instances of diminished food security and increasing social inequality. Finally, several studies indicate suboptimal regional or localized tradeoffs among specific ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration vs. water discharge rates, flood control vs. riparian soil replacement, and forest productivity vs. biodiversity. Conclusions Additional research on long-term environmental impacts and program effects in under-studied regions, particularly southern and western provinces, is necessary. In terms of recommendations for future research on the CCFP, there is a significant need to examine confounding factors, ideally through the selection of matching control groups to CCFP participants, and to ensure sampling methodologies are more representative of selected study sites and the overall targeted area. There remain many opportunities to assess specific socioecological effects, upon which to base future policy decisions and more broadly inform ecological restoration and eco-compensation in both theory and practice.Peer reviewe

Soil and Water Conservation and Integrated Management in Watershed Ecosystem of the Loess Plateau, China

The Loess Plateau is well known for severe soil erosion and ecosystem degradation. The key issues in this region are the food security (grain), ecological security and a sustainable economy. This paper reviews a range of studies on ecological restoration, and management and the benefit at watershed scale on the Loess Plateau. This includes several successful cases and failures in soil conservation. The paper presents practical soil conservation measures and related benefit analysis, and discusses some effective methods adopted in soil erosion control, research directions and future perspectives for the Loess Plateau

Evaluating the suitability of marginal land for a perennial energy crop on the Loess Plateau of China

Abstract With a large marginal land area, the Loess Plateau in China holds great potential for biomass production and environmental improvement. Identifying suitable locations for biomass production on marginal land is important for decision‐makers from the viewpoint of land‐use planning. However, there is limited information on the suitability of marginal land within the Loess Plateau for biomass production. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the suitability of the promising perennial energy crop switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) on marginal land across the Loess Plateau. A fuzzy logical model was developed and validated based on field trials on the Loess Plateau and applied to the marginal land of this region, owing to its ability of dealing with the continuous nature of soil, landscape variations, and uncertainties of the input data. This study identified that approximately 12.8–20.8 Mha of the Loess Plateau as available marginal land, of which 2.8–4.7 Mha is theoretically suitable for switchgrass cultivation. These parts of the total marginal land are mainly distributed in northeast and southwest of the Loess Plateau. The potential yield of switchgrass ranges between 44 and 77 Tg. This study showed that switchgrass can grow on a large proportion of the marginal land of the Loess Plateau and therefore offers great potential for biomass provision. The spatial suitability maps produced in this study provide information to farmers and policymakers to enable a more sustainable development of biomass production on the Loess Plateau. In addition, the fuzzy‐theory‐based model developed in this study provided a good framework for evaluating the suitability of marginal land

A Policy-Driven Large Scale Ecological Restoration: Quantifying Ecosystem Services Changes in the Loess Plateau of China

As one of the key tools for regulating human-ecosystem relations, environmental conservation policies can promote ecological rehabilitation across a variety of spatiotemporal scales. However, quantifying the ecological effects of such policies at the regional level is difficult. A case study was conducted at the regional level in the ecologically vulnerable region of the Loess Plateau, China, through the use of several methods including the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE), hydrological modeling and multivariate analysis. An assessment of the changes over the period of 2000–2008 in four key ecosystem services was undertaken to determine the effects of the Chinese government's ecological rehabilitation initiatives implemented in 1999. These ecosystem services included water regulation, soil conservation, carbon sequestration and grain production. Significant conversions of farmland to woodland and grassland were found to have resulted in enhanced soil conservation and carbon sequestration, but decreased regional water yield under a warming and drying climate trend. The total grain production increased in spite of a significant decline in farmland acreage. These trends have been attributed to the strong socioeconomic incentives embedded in the ecological rehabilitation policy. Although some positive policy results have been achieved over the last decade, large uncertainty remains regarding long-term policy effects on the sustainability of ecological rehabilitation performance and ecosystem service enhancement. To reduce such uncertainty, this study calls for an adaptive management approach to regional ecological rehabilitation policy to be adopted, with a focus on the dynamic interactions between people and their environments in a changing world

Sustainable land use changes in the north west provinces of China under the conversion of cropland to forest and grassland program

With increasing resource use pressure, land degradation in China has become increasingly severe in the past few decades especially in North West China. The Conversion of Cropland to Forest and Grassland Program (CCFGP), also known as the Grain for Green Program, was formally launched in 2002 to address the land degradation issue. Under the CCFGP, participating farmers are supported by the Government to grow trees and grass on land previously used for annual cropping. With government funding for the CCFGP drawing to an end in 2007, increasing attention amongst the Chinese policy makers, as well as the wider Chinese and international communities, has been devoted to the long-term sustainability of the land use changes triggered by the CCFGP. Question also remains as to whether there are better ways to deliver the anticipated policy outcome. In this thesis, a cost benefit analysis of the CCFGP is conducted to justify government intervention in providing the environmental goods and services through public finance. The potential efficiency gain of the Program is examined, based on which the sustainability of the land use changes under the Program together with the cost-effectiveness of the Program is explored. This partial cost benefit analysis of the CCFGP is conducted over a 20-year time period in the North West Provinces of China. Costs and benefits included in the analysis encompass the welfare impact of the land use changes on agricultural production and the environmental costs and benefits arising from the land use changes under the Program. Due to the limitation of data availability, some components of the environmental benefits and costs of runoff reductions are not included in the analysis. It has been found through this research that the livelihoods of participating farm households are improved by the CCFGP and the Program has positive impact on the social welfare of the local communities. The biophysical changes under the Program bring about both on-site and off-site benefits and costs. While the Program has been found to generate significant non-market environmental values, it also causes economic losses from reduced agricultural production arising from runoff reductions. Overall, the CCFGP improves the social welfare of people across Northern China over a 20-year time period since its implementation. Conclusion is drawn that government intervention through the CCFGP can be justified and the Program should be supported by the Chinese Government. Theoretically the sustainability of the Program can be achieved. However, sustainable land use changes will also depend on the implementation and design of the CCFGP. Future financing of the CCFGP is needed for some areas where the Program is found to decrease the social welfare of the local communities. Finally, there is room for better environmental targeting of the Program to improve the cost-effectiveness of the Program. The institution of an auction mechanism to allocate CCFGP funds more efficiently offers one potential solution