Incomplete Property Rights, Exposure to Markets and the Provision of Environmental Services in China

Bennett, Michael T.; Mehta, Aashish; Xu, Jing

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1467073

Cited by 7 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 37 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Heishanzui Township falls somewhere in between. Households that are more vested and experienced in agriculture, with less exposure to off-farm labor markets, manage planted trees better [40]. As such, Tanghe Township households worry less about the survival rate requirement, as they are used to agricultural work and have richer forestry knowledge and experience.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rural Household Preferences for Active Participation in “Payment for Ecosystem Service” Programs: A Case in the Miyun Reservoir Catchment, China

Bennett

Jiang

et al. 2017

PLoS ONE

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Many payment for ecosystem services (PES) programs, such as the Slope Land Conversion Program (SLCP), are passive and require full participation by impacted households. In contrast, this study considers the alternative of “active and incomplete” participation in PES programs, in which participants are not obliged to contract their own land, and have the right to select into the program or not. This type of program has been popular over the last decade in China; however, there have been few studies on the characteristics of willingness to participate and implementation. As such, this paper uses the Choice Experiment (CE) method to explore ways for inducing effective program participation, by analyzing the effects of different regime attributes. The case study used to analyze participation utility was the Jing-Ji Afforestation Program for Ecological and Water Protection (JAPEWP), a typical active-participation forestry PES program, and a key source of water near Beijing in the Miyun Reservoir Catchment (MRC). Analyzing rural household survey data indicated that the program faces a variety of challenges, including long-term maintenance, implementation performance, cost-effectiveness, and monitoring approaches. There are also challenges with one-size-fits-all payment strategies, due to ineffective program participation or imperfect implementation regimes. In response, this study proposes several policies, including providing secure and complete land tenure to the participants, creating more local off-farm employment opportunities, designing performance-based monitoring systems that are integrated with financial incentives, applying differentiated payment strategies, providing capacity building to support forestation activities, and establishing a comprehensive implementation regime that would address these challenges. These policy conclusions provide valuable lessons for other active-participation PES programs as well.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rural Household Preferences for Active Participation in “Payment for Ecosystem Service” Programs: A Case in the Miyun Reservoir Catchment, China

Bennett

Jiang

et al. 2017

PLoS ONE

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Assuming an inverse relationship between vegetation cover and soil erosion, the RFFP focused on increasing forest cover through cropland conversion, and afforestation and reforestation of barren hillsides (or wastelands). Sloping cropland, which is blamed for an estimated 65% of the 2 to 4 billion tons of silt released into the Yangtze and middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River each year, is a core target of the program (Bennett, Mehta, and Xu, 2011). Of the 14.67 million ha of cropland it aimed to convert, 4.4 million was to be on marginal cropland—land with a slope greater than 25 degrees.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Trac

Schmidt

Harrell

et al. 2013

Environmental Practice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

“…However, this rule was not always enforced, as farmers preferred to plant economic trees rather than ecological trees (Cui 2009 ;Bennett et al 2011 ). Farmers prefer economic trees because they can earn higher incomes from their fruits and other non-timber products, then use or sell the wood (from thinning) and timber, which may be harvested when fruit trees stop producing.…”

Section: Plant Typementioning

confidence: 99%

“…To examine the determinants of survival rates of program-planted trees and grasses, Bennett et al ( 2011 ) used a 2003 survey that collected household and plot-level data during and just after the pilot-phase of the program in the three initial pilot provinces: Shaanxi, Gansu, and Sichuan. 1 This dataset is used to examine the factors affecting the survival rates of program planted trees and grasses at the time of the fi rst inspection.…”

Section: Survival Rate Of Plantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Table 6.4 presents descriptive statistics regarding survival rates, tree and grass types planted, and enrolled area. Crops planted on the plots are grouped according to the Ministry of Forestry's program categories of "grasses", "economic forests" (orchard crops or trees with medicinal value) and "ecological forests" (timber crops) (Bennett et al 2011 ). As Table 6.4 suggests, mean survival rates are not statistically different between "ecological forests" and "economic forests", while survival rates for trees are lower than those for grasses, signifi cant at 1 % (Bennett et al 2011 ).…”

Section: Survival Rate Of Plantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

China’s Grain for Green Program

Delang

Yuan

2015

107

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Incomplete Property Rights, Exposure to Markets and the Provision of Environmental Services in China

Cited by 7 publications

References 37 publications

Rural Household Preferences for Active Participation in “Payment for Ecosystem Service” Programs: A Case in the Miyun Reservoir Catchment, China

Rural Household Preferences for Active Participation in “Payment for Ecosystem Service” Programs: A Case in the Miyun Reservoir Catchment, China

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

China’s Grain for Green Program

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About