The Impact of China’s Grassland Ecological Compensation Policy on the Income Gap between Herder Households? A Case Study from a Typical Pilot Area

Liu, Zhidong; Rao, Didi; Liu, Moucheng

doi:10.3390/land10121405

Cited by 11 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 48 publications

(50 reference statements)

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“…In addition, the level of compensation is commensurate with the size of the grassland contract for each household. This dependency caused a distinctive discrepancy in compensation payments and widened the income gap (Hou et al 2021, Li et al 2021. For example, pastoralists in Damao County received a compensation range from a minimum level of 583 USD/year to a maximum level of 30 625 USD/year in the first phase of GECP implementation due to variations in grassland size.…”

Section: Objectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the same year, Hou et al (2021) found that the GECP significantly improved both grassland ecological conditions and pastoralist income. On the other hand, Hou et al (2021) and Li et al (2021) further explored the effects of GECP on pastoralists' social equality and demonstrated that the GECP widened the income gap regionally and locally.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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China’s grassland ecological compensation policy achieves win-win goals in Inner Mongolia

Zhou

Yang²,

Qiu³

et al. 2023

Environ. Res. Commun.

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Approximately 10% of China’s grasslands are severely degraded and 90% of them are overgrazed. To protect ecosystems and boost human well-being, payments for ecosystem services programs have been implemented to generate win-win outcomes for both pastoralists and the grasslands. Taking a payment for ecosystem services program in Damao County, Inner Mongolia as an example, our study evaluated the ecological effects of the Grassland Ecological Compensation Policy (GECP) based on historical trend at the pixel, parcel, and county levels. We also evaluated the socioeconomic effects of GECP using both objective and subjective well-being at the household level. Our results show that: (1) at the pixel level, the percentages of additionally increased Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Net Primary Production (NPP) were 93.4% and 93.3% after GECP implementation, corresponding to the average additional effects of 0.08 and 58.99 g C/m2, respectively. At the parcel level, the GECP additionally increased NDVI between 0.02-0.17 (average of 0.08) and increased NPP between 28.36-115.15 (average of 60.30) g C/m2, respectively. At the county level, the GECP additionally increased grassland NDVI and NPP by 0.07 (~3.4% annually) and 53.63 g C/m2 (~4.5% annually) from 2008 to 2020, respectively; and (2) the GECP implementation significantly improved pastoralists’ objective well-being (P < 0.01) while the effects on subjective well-being indices were mixed. Our results also show that GECP effects on objective and subjective well-being significantly differ from households with large rangeland to those with small rangeland. We further discussed the experience, challenges, and opportunities of GECP. The long-term sustainability of GECP, particularly socioeconomic sustainability, still remains challenging and relies on guiding pastoralists to find alternative livelihoods. For future research and policy improvement, we call for the establishment of a better policy compensation mechanism that jointly considers the ecological effectiveness, economic efficiency, and social equity.

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Section: Objectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

China’s grassland ecological compensation policy achieves win-win goals in Inner Mongolia

Zhou

Yang²,

Qiu³

et al. 2023

Environ. Res. Commun.

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“…Regarding the influencing factors, the impacts of the PGES are central, so all relevant manifest variables were included in the model. Previous research proved by the entropy method shows that the natural capital, physical capital and financial capital of the herder households in New Barag Left Banner accounted for 80% of the total LA weight (Li et al, 2021). Thus, the model ignored the manifest variables of social capital and human capital.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although significant ecological effects have been achieved at the macro level, there are still many problems in the implementation of the current PGES. For example, accounting for the payment amount according to grassland area tends to widen the absolute income gap between households (Li et al, 2021). Top‐down institutional arrangements make some herder households less satisfied (Zhang et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Herder households' livelihood strategies as a response to payments for grassland ecosystem services in China

Liu

2022

Land Degrad Dev

Self Cite

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Herder households' response is critical in determining the effectiveness of payments for grassland ecosystem services (PGES). This study aimed to comprehensively analyze the influencing factors and processes of herder households' response to PGES using the sustainable livelihood approach. Here, we were the first to classify the ways herder households respond to PGES from the perspective of livelihood strategies, and proposed a sustainable livelihood indicator framework applicable to herder household research. According to the framework, we combined path analysis and statistical analysis to carry out empirical analysis in a typical area. The results show that the response strategies could be divided into three types, which rated by popularity from low to high, were reduction in herd counts (19.1%), livelihood diversification (27.7%) and industrial upgrading (53.1% max). Their formation was influenced by various factors, such as the PGES, vulnerability context, livelihood assets, and livelihood outcomes. In general, strict supervision (influence coefficient 0.46) helped reduce livestock headcounts, especially in small and medium households, which used to be the main bodies of overloading. Households with rising living standards tended to explore off‐farm livelihoods, but there were also some households that did so because of disagreement with PGES. Households with higher vulnerability and higher livelihood assets tended to cope with the shortage of grassland through industrial upgrading, thereby achieving a balanced utilization of grassland resources. This study not only makes an important supplement to PGES and sustainable livelihood theory but also provides an important reference for grassland ecological protection practices around the world.

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“…In China, in the theoretical research of ecological compensation, scholars mainly focus on the concept of ecological compensation [ 34 ], policies and regulations [ 35 , 36 ], foreign experience [ 37 , 38 ], compensation type and standard [ 39 , 40 ], mechanism construction [ 7 , 41 ], etc., and show an interdisciplinary characteristic involving economic, management, legal and environmental fields, etc. In the case of policies and regulations, scholars have developed quantitative estimates of the environmental and economic benefits of ecological protection compensation policies [ 15 ], focusing on the actual impacts of ecological protection compensation policies [ 42 , 43 , 44 ].…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantitative Evaluation of China’s Ecological Protection Compensation Policy Based on PMC Index Model

Dai

Zhang

Lan

2022

IJERPH

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As a comprehensive benefit coordination mechanism, ecological protection compensation has received increasing attention internationally. China has also introduced a series of policies to promote ecological protection compensation mechanism improvement. The evaluation of ecological protection compensation policies is the main basis for the formulation, adjustment and improvement of the policy. Based on the front-end perspective of policy formulation, this paper selects 10 ecological protection compensation policies issued by the State Council and various ministries in China from 2006 to 2021. A text mining-based PMC index evaluation system using the ROSTCM tool is constructed to quantitatively evaluate these 10 typical policies, and four representative policies are selected for comparative analysis. The overall design of China’s ecological protection compensation policies is reasonable, and 5 out of 10 policies have good PMC index scores, which are: P1, P2, P5, P7 and P9; and 5 are at acceptable levels, which are: P3, P4, P6, P8 and P10. However, the PMC surface and the concavity index indicate that there are still some limitations that need to be improved, including the obvious internal differentiation of the policies, the single effectiveness of the policies, and the insufficient incentive and guarantee measures. Finally, this paper provides suggestions for the optimization of ecological protection compensation policies accordingly.

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The Impact of China’s Grassland Ecological Compensation Policy on the Income Gap between Herder Households? A Case Study from a Typical Pilot Area

Cited by 11 publications

References 48 publications

China’s grassland ecological compensation policy achieves win-win goals in Inner Mongolia

China’s grassland ecological compensation policy achieves win-win goals in Inner Mongolia

Herder households' livelihood strategies as a response to payments for grassland ecosystem services in China

Quantitative Evaluation of China’s Ecological Protection Compensation Policy Based on PMC Index Model

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