Environmental Reviews and Case Studies: Is the Returning Farmland to Forest Program a Success? Three Case Studies from Sichuan

Abstract

China’s tuigeng huanlin or “Returning Farmland to Forest” (RFFP) program has been widely praised as the world’s largest and most successful payment for ecosystem services program, as well as a major contributor to China’s dramatic increase in forest cover from perhaps as low as 8% in 1960 to about 21% today. By compensating rural households for the conversion of marginal farmland to forestland and financing the afforestation of barren mountainsides, the program, in addition to expanding forestland, aims to reduce soil erosion and alleviate poverty. This paper presents qualitative and quantitative studies conducted on the local implementation of RFFP in three diverse townships in Sichuan. We find the actual results to be more mixed than the official figures would indicate. Though there have been some positive results, we identify problems with site and species selection, compensation for land taken out of cultivation, shift of labor to off-farm activities, and monitoring of replanted sites, which challenge the ecological and economic impacts of these programs and reveal much of the effort of the program has been misdirected. We suggest that efforts are misplaced because of the top-down, panacea nature of the program, which in turn is a feature of Chinese bureaucratic management.

The Institutional Challenges of Payment for Ecosystem Service Program in China: A Review of the Effectiveness and Implementation of Sloping Land Conversion Program

“…Among these, five were contributed by a team [46] that included Michael Bennett, Zhigang Xu and Jintao Xu (as colleagues and co-authors), and their main interests were policy formulation and top-down approach implementation. Another team at Michigan State University led by Runsheng Yin [23] published four articles concerning implementation strategy, whereas other articles explored the governance of policy implementation [30], notions of justice [47], trust and property security [48], and local variations in implementation [49].…”

“…Additionally, the SLCP has acquired meaning that far exceeds the program itself. It was initially conceived as part of the "Open the West" campaign [49], which aimed to help China's western provinces catch up economically with the eastern provinces and transfer more rural labor to cities [21,97], which gave the SLCP a means for urbanization.…”

The Impact of International Cooperative Initiatives on Biodiversity (ICIBs)

“…Reviews, especially of the first pilot phase of the programme, also note low seedling survival rates and monoculture-reforestation (Trac et al 2013) (low impact). However, more recent reviews (covering phase 2 of the programme) mention higher survival rates (Gutiérrez Rodríguez et al 2016), although the success rate vary per region and depend on how the practices are implemented with local communities (Bennett el at 2014) (2nd loop, improved impact).…”

Has China’s Natural Forest Protection Program Protected Forests?—Heilongjiang’s Experience

“…To deal with these problems, the Chinese government launched several large ecological restoration programs in the late 1990s. Of these programs, the Natural Forest Protection Program (NFPP) is recognized as one of the largest in terms of geographic scope, public investment, and the number of people impacted [4][5][6]. Thus, it has been viewed as a far-reaching step toward protecting forest ecosystems and promoting sustainable resource management [7].…”