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Sustainable land use change in the north west provinces of China
Project ID
ADP/2002/021
Project Country
Commissioned Organisation
Australian National University, National Centre for Development Studies, Australia
Project Leader
Professor Jeff Bennett
jeff.bennett@anu.edu.au
Phone:
(02) 6125 0154
Fax:
(02) 6125 8448
Project Budget
$499,217.00
Start Date
01/01/2003
Finish Date
31/12/2005
Extension Start Date
01/01/2006
Extension Finish Date
30/09/2007
ACIAR Research Program Manager
Dr Simon Hearn
Related publications
Overview Objectives
This project facilitated the development of policies that will ensure changes in land use management in China's northwest provinces that are sustainable in the long term (defined in terms of the financial viability of farming communities, social acceptability and environmental impacts).
Project Background and Objectives
Pollution caused by dust has been, and remains, a significant problem in northeast China. Dust storms, pushed by prevailing westerly winds, begin in China's western provinces, from where the dust blows eastwards, resulting in air pollution to cities, most notably Beijing, and even reaching Korea and Japan. The dust storms have their beginnings in land and water resource degradation in western areas of China, which are also the source of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. Estimates put the extent of this degradation at 135 million hectares or approximately 14 per cent of China's land mass. This equates to 30 per cent of total pasture land in China being eroded, desertified or salinised. Of greater concern is that these degraded areas are expanding by 1.3 million hectares a year.
Responding to this, the Chinese Government has implemented the Grain for Green Program (GFGP) offering farmers incentives to establish trees and perennial pastures. Uptake has exceeded expectations, putting the financial viability of this program at risk. So far the Program has not sufficiently answered one key question: what will happen to the farmers in these areas if land use and agricultural practices are not sustainable and profitable? Developing sustainable land use requires farmers to earn an income in the short- and long-term. Short-term income assistance is on offer through the program, but this will only last five years and there are signs that this may be an insufficient period of time to establish sustainable industries. The challenge is to develop land use practices that address degradation and ensure agriculture can continue sustainably well into the future.
Progress Reports (Year 1, 2, 3 etc)
Year 1:
The Australian Project Leader visited Beijing to progress defining of the structure of the project, establishment of the components of the financial analysis of farmers' responses to the Grain for Green Policy and the social benefit cost analysis of the wider impacts of the Policy. During this visit, it was announced that three additional members of the research team had been appointed with the additional cost being born by the FEDRC.
Four members of the Chinese team travelled to Australia, meeting with policy makers and economists from key Canberra-based agencies, and attending a training session on extended social benefit cost analysis and choice modelling (techniques to be used during the project). One day was spent on a field trip to study land degradation issues in the Upper Murrumbidgee Catchment area and two more days in Sydney for meetings with NSW resource management agencies' staff. During the Australian visit, further progress was made on developing the research strategy for collecting the financial impact data of the Grain for Green Policy. It was decided to sample farmers from four counties - two from Shannxi Province (Ansai and Binxian) and two from Qinhai Province (Gonghe and Minhe) - on the basis of bio-physical and socioeconomic factors. Initial drafts of the questionnaire to be used for the farmer survey have also been prepared by the Chinese team members on the basis of Prof Bennett's advice.
Year 2:
Progress during 2004 was centred on the evaluation of the impacts on farmer household livelihoods of the Conversion of Cropland to Forest and Grassland Programme (CCFGP). An intensive survey of 400 farmer households involved in the CCFGP across four counties (Binxian, Ansai, Gonghe and Minhe) in two Provinces (Shanxxi and Quinghai) was undertaken. This was preceded by survey protocol determination, interviewer training and pilot testing of draft questionnaires during a visit to Beijing and the two samples provinces by Prof Bennett in April/May. Data collected from the survey has been collated and analysed with a research report prepared to first draft stage.
Progress has also been made on the estimation of environmental values associated with the CCFGP. Initial focus groups designed to inform the choice modelling questionnaire design were carried out in Beijing in December when Prof Bennett and Ms Xuehong Wang (research assistant) travelled to China. Ms Wang stayed in Beijing for six weeks during which time she investigated the likely environmental impacts of the CCFGP and the integration of those impacts into the economic analysis. A draft report on the environmental attributes of land use change in the north west has also been prepared. The first two research reports for the project are now available on the project web-site: http://apseg.anu.edu.au/staff/jb_suslndrr.php
Year 3:
The livelihood impact analysis of the introduction of the Grain for Green Project (GFGP), carried out across four counties in two provinces in NW China was completed, a research report published and a journal paper based on the research report has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management.
Detailed research on the projected biophysical impacts of the GFGP was undertaken predominantly using secondary sources and interviews with researchers in that field. The information collected was used as the base for the design of a Choice Modelling questionnaire aimed at estimating the non-use, off-farm environmental impacts of the GFGP. Four key attributes of these impacts were defined: air quality (dust storm prevalence), water quality in the Yellow River, aesthetics of the landscape and biodiversity. Focus group and subsequent pre-testing of the questionnaire were carried out in Beijing, Xi'an and Ansai. These three sites were selected because of their differing geographic locations relative to the GFGP areas. They were the sites for the application of the survey which was administered in a face to face interview, with university students being used as the interviewers. The data collected from the surveys have been analysed and a research report outlining the findings has been written.
Members of the Chinese research team visited Australia on two occasions through the year. M. Zhang, M. Dai, Mr Wang and M. Zhu attended lectures at the ANU and made familiarisation visits to forest operations and voluntary tree planting groups around Canberra in August. In October, Mr Liang and Mr Zhang spent 10 days working on the Choice Modelling data analysis.
The project web-site provides wide access to the project's findings: http://apseg.anu.edu.au/staff/jb_suslndrr.php
Year 4:
The initial project was completed by the end of 2006. Research activities during 2006 included the following:
The farmer livelihood analysis was extended to convert the household based information to a region wide population basis. The value estimates of agricultural production impacts of the CCFGP on the Loess Plateau were thus derived.
Runoff reductions brought about by the CCFGP in the Yellow River were modelled with the help of hydrologists from China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower. Based on the biophysical modeling results, the economic costs associated with reduced runoff in the Yellow River Basin were estimated using the water allocation economic model developed jointly by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and the Chinese Agricultural Policy Centre. These economic costs are those from the loss in agricultural production in the region due to reduced water supply for irrigation.
These results, together with the non-market value estimates from the choice modelling exercise conducted in 2005, were integrated into a full benefit cost analysis to identify the impacts on both upstream farmers and downstream potential beneficiaries. This was followed by policy analysis and recommendations for resolving the public good problem of the environmental services provided by the CCFGP to ensure the sustainable land use change in North West China.
The research reports from the above activities (Report 6 - 9) are now available on the project website: http://crawford.anu.edu.au/staff/jb_suslndrr.php.
In addition, other project activities during 2006 are as following:
Professor Jeff Bennett and Ms Xuehong Wang from ANU as well Ms Chen Xie and Mr Li Jiang from China FEDRC attended the 50th Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society in Sydney in February 2006 where the choice modeling paper was presented. The paper was later submitted to the Ecological Economics and was accepted by the Journal in October 2006.
The Project Symposium was held in Beijing on July 10, 2006 with participants from the Chinese government agencies, universities and research institutes, donor agencies as well as representatives from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and the Australian Embassy in Beijing, and two external reviewers to assess the performance of the research activities.
Two more papers have been submitted to the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management and to the China Journal.
The project has been successfully reviewed by the external reviewers and ACAIR, with suggestions on further policy research on the CCFGP program in China. Based on the comments, the project has been approved with an extension period into 30 June 2007, with valuing flooding reductions being the focus. Meanwhile, a new project is being scoped during the extension period, and will be submitted to ACIAR in July 2007.
Project Outcomes
The project focused on elements of a cost-benefit analysis of the GFGP Program. However, due to the limitation of time available for the initial project, the impact of the GFGP on watershed protection, especially on flood mitigation, was not quantified and evaluated. The lack of information on the flood mitigation impact of the GFGP and the associated economic benefits so derived constrained the comprehensive assessment of the Program.
Thus the extension phase of the project aimed to fill this information gap through an analysis of the flood mitigation effect of the GFGP in the Yellow River Basin. In this extension, the researchers developed a physically-based distributed hydrological model (WEP-L model) to simulate the natural hydrological processes from 1956 to 2000 in the Yellow River Basin. From this they determined that the GFGP had a relatively small potential impact on flood reductions in the Yellow River Basin, with an economic benefit from flood reductions of CNY362 million. Compared to the total investment of around CNY65.5 billion in the region under the GFGP, these benefits are small. Based on these findings, the potential economic benefits from flood reductions will be offset by the potential economic losses from lower agricultural production (CNY667 million) due to reduced runoff under the Program.
The research contributed to the knowledge base of current research work on the GFGP. It addressed the priority issue around the implementation of the GFGP which is the quantification of its ecological impacts, identified key areas for further research, and helped improve decision-making in the GFGP policy context. The work also has implications for the ranking of the management options (either structural or non-structural) to mitigate flood disasters in the Yellow River Basin.
Two other tasks undertaken during the extension phase were the compiling of a book based on the project research reports and scoping of a new research report as part of continuing the collaboration between ANU and the State Forestry Administration in China.
Location
There are no project locations defined for this project.
