Global Poverty Reduction and Development Forum-2012-Chapter VII

Chapter VII: The eco-environmental policy that supports inclusive development

ZHU Lizhi, GU Zhenbin, HUANG Dandan

Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development

Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences

Foreword

Poverty is the biggest long-standing challenge faced by countries all over the world in the process of social and economic development. Eliminating poverty, promoting development and realizing common prosperity has been the ideality of human being since ancient times, and also an important issue that needs to be solved urgently by all the countries today.

China is a developing country with the largest population in the world. Great effort has been made in solving the poverty problem for a long time and tremendous results have been achieved, which brought forward the realization of the UN Millennium Development Goals on halving the poverty population and made outstanding contributions to the cause of the worldwide poverty reduction. However, china is still in the primary stage of socialism. The social-economic development level is still low while regional development imbalance is significant, and deep contradictions that restrict the development of poor area still exist. The following are the main problems faced by China. Firstly, the target group of poverty alleviation is huge. According to the 2011 rural poverty alleviation standard[1], the target population is 122 million, which accounts for 12.77% of the rural registered population (955 million). It is absolutely an arduous task to lift such a large population out of poverty. Secondly, the “Relative-Poverty” problem is significant. Since 1990s, the wealth gap between rich and poor has been widening gradually in China. The Gini coefficient[2] has exceeded the international warning line of 0.4. In particular, the income gap between urban and rural residents is striking. In 2011, the per capita disposable income of urban residents (21,810 yuan) was 3.13 times that of rural residents (6,977 yuan). Thirdly, the population lives on the edge of poverty takes up a large proportion and the rate of falling back into poverty is still high. According to the monitoring[3], 50.5% of the poor population comes from the group of “falling back into poverty”. Big transitions of people in and out of poverty are quite common. Fourthly, the type of poverty population has changed so as to increase the difficulty of poverty elimination. China’s current poor population are mainly distributed in areas like the mountainous regions of southwestern China (lack of soil), loess plateau in northeastern China (land degradation and severe water shortage), impoverished mountainous areas in Shaan Xi and Sichuan provinces (land head, little arable land, poor transportation, serious water losses and soil erosion) and Qinghai-Tibet plateau area (insufficient accumulated temperature). The hostile environment and the backward infrastructure in these areas became the key restriction factors in shaking off poverty and getting rich. We could say that the poverty alleviation in China has reached a more difficult and crucial stage. With resources and environment constraints, on one hand, we have to ensure that the poor population after the raised standard will continue to decrease, and on the other hand, to make sure that people on the verge of poverty can get rich.

1．Eco-frail area- the core bastion of poverty relief in China

In view of ecological point, eco-frail area refers to the juncture area between two different geographical types. In these areas, the ecological system structure is not stable, the capacity of resisting the turbulence is comparatively weak, and the carrying capacity is low thus could be easily destroyed. These areas are the key protection targets. In this article, it refers to the areas that face with serious decline of land productivity and caused by the climate change and people’s living, thus resulting in the severe economic recession (Chen Jiansheng, 2008). The eco-frail areas in China mainly distribute in the northern arid-semiarid area, southern hilly area, south-west hilly area, Qinghai-Tibet plateau area and parts of the eastern coastal area (Ministry of Environmental Protection, 2008). Highly coincident with the extremely poor areas, the eco-frail areas are the focal point of the poverty alleviation work. In the ecologically-frail areas, frequent natural disasters, and low resistant capacity and carrying capacity for the economic growth and social development increase the difficulty of poverty reduction.

1. Poverty commonly occurs in the eco-frail areas

From 1949, the founding year of the People’s Republic of China was founded, to the early stage of reform and opening-up, poverty is a common phenomenon in China. Promoted by a series of measures including the “household contract responsibility system”, Chinese rural economic achieved rapid development and the poverty-stricken population had been greatly reduced. However, some parts are still not able to shake off poverty, even to maintain the basic living need. Along with the decrease of the poverty population, the geographical feature of poverty distribution is getting more distinct, the poverty problem of the eco-frail areas arouses widely concern. According to a research carried out in the late 1990s, within the counties that classified to eco-frail area, about 75.92% were figured in to poverty-stricken counties; within the land that classified to the eco-frail area, about 43.33% locates in the extent of poverty-stricken counties; within the population that classified to the eco-frail area, about 75.86% live in the poverty-stricken counties (Li Zhou, 1994). This proves that the poverty problem has high correlation with the fragile environment, and the poverty-stricken population is comparatively concentrated.

In recent years, along with the in-depth reform of rural areas and enhanced efforts put into poverty alleviation, the geographical feature of the poverty-stricken population is getting increasingly emerged, concentrating in the mountainous area of western China, desert region, alpine region, loess plateau, regions of high-incident endemic-diseases and reservoir areas. According to the monitor data conducted by the State Statistical Bureau, in 2009, 65.9% of the poverty population distributed in the western part of China; the poverty rates are 0.5%, 3.4% and 8.3% respectively in eastern part, middle part and western part of China. High poverty rates happened in 7 western provinces including Guizhou, Yunnan, Tibet, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai and Xinjiang. Apparently, these are the so called eco-frail areas, their common characters are: located in remote areas, lack of good infrastructure, unbalanced eco-system, low economic growth, backward educational level, short of drink water and harsh living conditions.

2. Difficulties on poverty relief has increased in the eco-frail areas

Generally speaking, the effect of economic growth on poverty reduction coincides with the pattern of marginal effect. That means, when the absolute poverty rate decreases to a certain low level, the impact on poverty reduction produced by economic growth will decline gradually. Without adjustment of policies or measures, the pace of poverty reduction will slow down distinctly, and the phenomenon of “falling back into poverty” will occur in a wide range. Therefore, in spite of the remarkable achievements in poverty alleviation in the past decades, China’s poverty reduction has reached a bottleneck at present. Especially in the eco-frail areas, the contradiction between people’s livelihood and environmental protection is acute, and the objectives of poverty reduction and ecological protection are hard to be harmonized. In addition, the income increasing oriented poverty reduction will bring more pressure to resources and environment, which may thus exacerbate the poverty of eco-frail areas. The poverty reduction has to harmonize with the objective of improve the eco-environment, which is the fundamental reason of the increased difficulties on poverty reduction in eco-frail areas.

3. The poverty-relief achievements in the eco-frail area is difficult to consolidate

 “Falling back into poverty” is a phenomenon referring to those who had got rid of poverty or above the poverty criteria went back into poverty again. In 2003, the absolute poverty-stricken population had increased by 800,000, which triggered the query on poverty alleviation work, and also drew the public attention to the problem of falling back to poverty. Actually, falling-back to poverty is a common reality in the process of solving the poverty problem, especially for the poverty-stricken area, since the poor population has relatively low developing capacity and weak developing basis, in case of the external factors like natural disasters, environment changes or market risks, which can easily lead to harm and losses (Yan Tingwu, 2005).

Natural disasters are the main reason of falling-back to poverty while the eco-frail areas are the areas with high-incidence of natural disasters. Agriculture including animal husbandry is the leading industry in the poverty-stricken areas, and also is the sector that has high dependency on the natural condition and can easily suffer from the natural disasters thus lead to economic loss. China is one of the countries in the world which is most seriously affected by the natural disasters. The western part of China has the high incidence of the natural disasters with the low anti-disaster capacity. It is difficult to consolidate the poverty reduction achievements. In another hand, the death caused by natural disasters is inevitable, and many of the disaster-affected family fall into absolute poverty because of the injury or illness or labor decrease.  These lead to a further difficulty for the poverty reduction work. The analysis conducted by Ministry of Civil Affairs on nationwide natural disasters status in 2011 indicated that, various kinds of natural disasters affected 430 million people, caused 1,126 death and 309.64 billion yuan of direct economic loss; above 80% of the disaster-affected people distributed in the areas featured with “early-liberated, minority nationality, border and poor”; and the analysis also points out that the disaster status is comparatively in a lesser degree in 2011, hereto we can see how strongly the natural disasters affected the poverty reduction work, and this also shows the high difficulty of consolidation on the poverty alleviation achievements.

4. Poverty and ecological degradation is in a mutual cause-effect relation in eco-frail areas

In the conference on environment and development of United Nations in 1992, all the representatives agreed that: the third-world’s poverty is the basic reason of the ecological environment degradation in many of the developing countries, while the eco-environment degradation leads to further poverty, such a vicious cycle makes it much difficult on the environmental issue for the developing countries (Wangya, 1993). In fact, the correlation between poverty and ecological degradation is far from this simple. To use one of them, as the incentive will not form to the vicious cycle consequentially, the determinant is the bearing capacity of regional resources& environment against to the population, economic and social development. In other words, when the regional resources & environment has the low bearing capacity on population, economic and social development, poverty alleviation and ecology will interact as both cause and effect.

For eco-frail areas, the cause-effect correlation is very distinct. In the northern arid and semi-arid areas in China, for example, over-farming and overgrazing caused ecological damage, with a result that natural disasters occurred and further aggravated poverty. If the living way of highly dependent on natural resources will not change, the poverty reduction in eco-frail areas will bring more pressure to the environment and results in a more fragile environment. To break this vicious cycle, one has to start with improving the regional eco-environment and enhance the regional resources bearing capacity, and enable the population of poor areas to benefit from the ecological management.

2、Ecological construction and poverty reduction- effect and problems of China

From the end of last century, china had strengthened the efforts on ecological restoration and environment protection, a serious of ecological projects have been initiated in the areas of ecological barrier, river resources and frail environment with focusing on the ecological problems which severely affects the sustainable economic development such as water losses and soil erosion& degradation. At present, most of the ecological constructions have completed a construction cycle, and obtained distinct ecological, social and economic benefit, and at the same time, lots of the problems still exist, hereafter we only summarize and analyze these problems through the point of ecological improvement and poverty reduction.

1. The project of returning farmland to forest

The returning farmland to forest project was started from 2002, and it is an ecological repairing project that with the most intensive investment, most broad of range, strongest nature of policy, and highest public participation in China even in the world. It aims to solve the water losses and soil erosion problem in the key regions. The project implementation areas include: important water resource protection area, water soil losses area in loess plateau, stony desertification area and key windy-sandy region. According to the relative regulation, the project mainly aims to build ecological forests with the percentage not less than 80%. The central government provides the subsidy to farmers with grain and ready money, and the subsidized period is: 2 years for returning the grassland, 5 years for returning the economic forest, 8 years for returning for ecological forest; the subsidized standard is as below: for yellow river basin area, 100kg of grain plus 20 yuan living subsidy /Mu every year for returning the cultivate land, and also 50 yuan /Mu for seedlings and forestation. In 2004, the central government decided to put the cash subsidy to land-returning farmers instead of grain according to the standard of 1.4 yuan/ kg of grain. In 2007, the central government decided to continually subsidize the land-returning farmers with the criteria of: 105yuan/Mu for Yangtze river basin and southern area, 70yuan/Mu for yellow river basin and northern area, the living subsidy for 20yuan/Mu is remained; the subsidized period is: 8 years for ecological forests, 5 years for economic forests, 2 years for grassland. Till the end of 2011, the accumulated amount of farmland returning is 427 million mu, and the total investment from the central government reached to more than 450 billion yuan. 3.2 million household and 1240 million farmers have benefited. The recent tasks of the project are to consolidate the exist land returning results, and to building man-made forests and sealing off mountainous areas to facilitate the afforestation.

 

Since the project was put in to practice in 2011, the project has made great progress, accelerated the afforest process, increased the vegetarian cover and decreased the soil and water losses and windy-sandy damage; the subsidy policy enjoys the public’s full support, the subsidized grain and cash became an important part of the land-returning farmer’s income, and their life has been greatly improved. However, to consolidate the project achievements is still facing a number of problems: one is the subsidize strength is decreasing gradually compared with the other kinds of subsidy such as direct food subsidy, agricultural materials subsidy and certified seed subsidy, etc, and the subsidy contracts are about to expire; secondly, the profit for returning the land is quite low, land-returning farmers lack of enthusiasm on investment and working which means it is hard to get benefit from the ecological improvement. In regard of these 2 aspects, to continually put the project into good use of improving the environment, alleviating poverty and promoting the social development, we have to make sure that farmers could continually benefited from joining the project while this benefit should be higher than the other ways of land using.

2. Project of returning grazing to grassland

From 2003, Chinese central government has started the project of returning grazing to grassland in 8 provinces including inner Mongolia, Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, Yunnan, Sichuan, Tibet, Xinjiang and XinJiang Production and Construction Group, aiming to offer a certain amount of economic complement, to restore the grassland vegetation, improve the grassland ecology, and promote the grassland ecology coordinately development with animal husbandry by taking the measures including fence construction, after-culture improvement, prohibit grazing, rest grazing, rotation grazing, etc.

The returning grazing to grassland project practiced in the mechanism of combine central and local governments with households. The central government provides the necessary feeding grain complement and cash complement for fence construction; the rotation grazing will not enjoy the feed grain subsidy; the construction funds for grassland fence is in according with the grassland type and range. The desertification grassland in the west of Inner Mogolia, Gansu and Qinghai, the degradation grassland in the east of Inner Mongolia, the degradation grassland in the north of Xinjiang will be subsidized with 5.5kg of feed grain/Mu for prohibit grazing in a whole year; the seasonal rest grazing is counted as 3 months with 1.37kg feed grain subsidy/Mu, the grassland fencing construction is subsidized by 16.6 yuan/Mu, which has 70% from central government and 30% from local government and individual; for the river resource grassland in the east of Tibet-Qinghai plateau, the subsidy is 2.75kg of feed grain/Mu from the central government for a whole year of prohibited grazing, regarding to the seasonal rest grazing which counted by every 3 months, the subsidy is 0.69kg of feed grain/Mu from the central government, the grassland fencing construction is subsidized with 20yuan/Mu, which has 70% from the central government and 30% from the local governments and the individual; the feed grain will subsidize 5 years continually. In 2011, the state council further perfected the returning grazing to grassland policy, to increase the central government subsidize percentage to 80% for fencing construction; to increase the fencing construction subsidy from central government in Qinghai-Tibet plateau to 20yuan/Mu, and 16yuan/Mu for other areas; to increase the central government subsidy for after-culture seedling to 20yuan/Mu, to subsidize the construction for man-made forage with 160yuan/Mu, the construction of animal shelters with 3000yuan per household.

Over ten years, the project goes well and had the qualified construction. The project enabled the grassland to have a rehabilitate, and the ecology had a distinct improvement, which greatly promoted the mode of grassland husbandry production and the economic development in grazing areas, received the appreciation from the local government and the grazing farmers. As indicated by monitoring, the average rate of vegetation coverage in the project area is 64%, which is 12% higher than the other areas; the grass height, grass yield and edible grass yield in the project area is 21.3cm, 3,185kg/ha and 2713.5kg/ha respectively, which is 36.2%, 75.1% and 84.1% higher than the other areas respectively. (Wang Yanhua, 2011). However, some problems also existed in the process of policy implementing, one is that the subsidy is not enough for complement the farmer’s whole input and losses, and the project investment will be an astronomical number if the losses were completely complemented; the second is the current governance force could not reverse the grassland degradation that is caused by the over-loaded grazing, and more severe degraded grassland could not get a rehabilitation. Therefore, if the economic development mode in the farming and stockbreeding areas will not change, and also can’t change the status that farmers highly relay on the cultivation and animal husbandry, the grassland degradation in China will get increasingly severe, the arid and semi-arid areas in the North part of china will hardly to get rid of poverty.

3. The project of protecting the natural forests

The project of protecting the natural forests started from 2000 which is a remarkable transition from wood production-oriented forestry to ecological built-oriented, and the project aims to solve the issue of natural forest protection, rehabilitation and restoration in the upper stream area of Yangtze river and Yellow river, as well as the key forest areas in North-East China, Inner Mongolia and other areas. The main tasks are: one is to entirely call off the natural forest logging in the upper stream area of Yangtze River and Yellow river, to decrease the wood production in important forest areas including North-East China and Inner Mongolia; the second is to strictly mange and protect the forest land, the shrub land and immature forest land in the project area; the third is to facilitate the construction of public welfare forest. After banning the forest logging and decreasing the wood production, the biggest problem in the project area is how to emplace the redundant employees as well as their social guarantee; the project emplaced the employee by allocating the forest management and protection tasks, and also the public welfare forests construction, through providing the social insurance subsidy, financial transfer subsidy to compensate the employees as well as the firms and local governments’ losses caused by the project. Therefore, the project is not only an ecological construction project but also a biggest people’s livelihood project in the forestry areas. In 2011, the second stage of the project initiated by continually proceeding from the first stage’s task, and increased the task of young forest management, aiming at realizing the transition of forest resources increasing to quality improving, through implementing the ecological construction and increasing the project investment, to increase the employment, enhance the employ’s income and further perfect the social insurance system for the employees and residents in forestry areas.

The first stage of the project went well, the natural forest had been well protected, the ecological status in the project area had a distinct improve, and it got full support from publics of project areas. But considering the long-term social and economic sustainable development in the project areas, to protect the natural forests by implementing projects has the following problems: one is the long-term stable input mechanism and professional management team are required to well manage the project about the natural forests, and the project is an apparent temporary measure; secondly, the protection policy is used to be a direct reason for making the residents in the project areas fall into poverty, and also is a major factor which will restrict the social-economic development in the project area, how to coordinate the relation between environment protection and economic development is still a core question that puzzled the project manager. Apparently, if the residents’ livelihood in the project areas still has many restrictions due to the environmental protection, or they could not sustainably benefit from the ecological improvement, it will be unfair for those people and therefore be difficult to continue.

 (4) Beijing & Tianjin sandstorm sources control project

The project initiated in 2002 is a major project on the ecological construction for Beijing & Tianjin, aiming to solve the sand and dusty problem of the surrounding area of Beijing. According to the difference of the causes, the project areas were divided to 4 different types: northern arid grass land desertification control zone, the “hunshandak” sand-land control zone, farming-herd crisscross sand-land control zone and Yanshan hilly water resources protection zone. Different technical measures are adopted to the above areas respectively: one is to strengthen the grassland management, enhance the grassland construction, improve the husbandry production mode, improve pasture and their productivity; the second is to facilitate the grassland construction, enhance the forest and grass vegetation, fix the activate sand dune, keep down the activate trends; The third is to ban the cultivation and restrict the grazing, enhance the vegetation, strengthen the governing force and facilitate the vegetation’s restore, and to conduct the “returning farmland to forests” in the severe desertification areas; The fourth is to preserve the existing forests by conserving multi-layer water resources in barren mountain areas. From 2011, the project went into the achievement-consolidation stage, at the time of putting forward all the project tasks, to strengthen the pertinence of targets area and vegetation restoration mode. “Returning farmland to forests”, artificially forestation, close-hillside forestation and aerial seedling forestation are the main tasks in the “12th five-year plan”.

The project had made a distinct effort since it had been carried out for more than 10 years. One is to initially establish the ecological protection system around Beijing & Tianjin, and the project area turns to a sand-storm decreasing area instead of a increasing one, as the monitoring result was showed in 2011, the vegetation rate in the project area has increased 15% percentage than the other areas;  secondly, the sandy-dusty days are decreased obviously, the eco-system has been well improved; thirdly, the biological diversity index rose obviously, the stability of vegetation eco-system increased; fourthly, the sandy land decreased distinctly, and the water-soil preserving capacity increased; the fifthly, the social economy has achieved stable development, the sustainable development ability increasingly enhanced, and the project contributed 23-28.3% to the sustainable economic development. Similar to the project of “returning farmland to forests”, the project of “managing Beijng & Tianjin sandstorm sources” also was excluded by the preferential policy for farmers, because the subsidy from returning farmlands is actually less than the benefits from grain planting, farmers tend to rehabilitate to cultivation or increase the animal husbandry, and the eco-damage in the project areas could happen again in that case. Apparently, the social-economic development in the project area highly relies on the natural resources like land and water, to realize the economic increase, the resources utilization mode have to follow closely with the policy, that is why the project could hardly get sustainable support from the farmers.

5. Wild animals and plants protection and nature reserve construction

The project started in 2001 is a project of future-proofed, long-term prospect and has lots of strategic meaning which mainly aims to solve the problems of gene preservation, bio-diversity protection, natural protection and wet-land protection. By means of implementing the “general plan on construction of the national wild animal and plants protection and natural protect area” to save 15 kinds of rare and endangered species such as    pandas, crested ibis, tigers, golden monkey, Tibetan antelope, Asian elephant, musk, etc; to save and restore 40 kinds of extremely endangered wild animals and 120 kinds of minimum population of wild animals and their habitat, to strengthen the habitat and resources protection, to realize regression for more than 20 kinds of artificial breeding animals and more than 20 minimum population plants; to strengthen the scientific research, genetic resource protection, rescue and breed the wild animals, and to enhance, improve and build a bunch of national natural preservation area, hunting prohibit area and gene resource areas, to store and develop rare animal and plants species. Eventually a natural protective network will be established which is a natural protective area and important wet land featured by wide distribution, rich category, advanced equipment, efficient management, and important international impact.

By the end of 2010, the natural reserves have reached 2035 places, taken a total area of 124 million hectares, accounting for 12.89% of the total territory area; the total investment capital is 5.928 billion yuan, including the national investment of 3.386 billion yuan (the state forestry administration, 2011). The implementation of the project has improved the rare animal protection especially on crested ibis and Chinese alligator, and also improved the breeding facilities, consolidated the rescue and breeding capacity, and promoted parts of the rare animals plants increased. Apart from other projects, the objective of this project is very single, that is to protect the rare animals and plants as well as their habitats, and the people’s livelihood in the around areas has not been fully considered. In addition, the increase of the rare animals has triggered frequent damage to the crops and the livestock which caused serious discontent of the farmers because of lack of compensation.

In general, the eco-protective and constructive projects has played important roles in improving the ecological environment, the project policy could balance the poverty reduction and income increasing, and a favorable periodic achievements has been made. But in the long term, if the backward development mode of highly relying on the natural resources could not be changed, it will turn out to be a short-term measure to protect and restore the environment, and such kind of eco-improving and poverty reduction will hardly form a long-term mechanism.

3. Inclusive development: a mode of balancing the ecological improvement with poverty reduction

At present, china is caught between the ecological restoration and the poverty reduction. In one hand, the eco-type poverty turns into a major part of the poverty population in China, and only the sustainable ecological improvement can eliminate the poverty. On another hand, after acquiring a certain periodic achievement, the central government financed ecological construction project is facing a severe challenge of people’s livelihood issues. Without the continual financial support from all levels of government and the rigid restriction from the eco-protection policy, the farmers in the project area will keep on destroying the environment. Therefore, adjustments have to be made on both ecological management and poverty reduction in the eco-frail area, which will lead to mutual coordination, mutual promotion and turns vicious cycle into virtuous cycle.

1. The connotation of inclusive development

Inclusive development is a developing mode aiming at eliminating poverty, and was firstly adopted by the international organizations who are engaging in reducing poverty such as ADB and World Bank, now the concept has been accepted by more and more developing countries. With the deepening recognition on the relation among economic growth, inequality and poverty reduction, some studies show that the increased inequality makes the economic development achievements becomes difficult to benefit all the population (specially for the poor), which is the basic reason that hinders the poverty reduction from economic growth. In this context, Inclusive development has been initiated as the countermeasure, and it emphasizes to establish the inclusive regulations, to provides broad opportunities, to eliminate the rights poverty and the social discrimination, to realize the equal opportunities and participation, to enable the whole population including the poor group can actively participating in the economic developing and share the development results, thus to lead to a comprehensive progress for each individual (Long Chaoyang, 2012)

Equal sharing of opportunities and achievements are the core meaning of inclusive development. The word “inclusive” refers to a basic requirement on the process and results of the economic growth and has three levels of meanings: one is to enable the economic growth to benefit all the population, especially the poor group. It is not only an important objective of inclusive development but also a necessary condition for realizing sustainable poverty reduction. Secondly, to make everyone has equal development opportunities, it is the basic assurance for inclusive development, and also could arouse people’s enthusiasm of all classes of the society, thus to improve the efficiency of economic growth. Thirdly, to enhance the individual’s capacity during the process of economic growth, it is to ensure a sustainable poverty reduction.

2. Multi-targets coordination is the essential requirement of inclusive development

In order to achieve the sustainable poverty reduction, inclusive development has to first keep the high-speed economic growth, and at the same time, the inequality has to be reduced to realize the achievements sharing. However, in the real world, economic growth can hardly balance efficiency with justice. Moreover, economic growth is only an essential condition for poverty reduction, and poverty will definitely conflict with the other development goals (such as ecological protection), in the context of which, “inclusive” will perform as a multi-targets coordination, one is to defuse the multi-goals conflicts, make them to achieve in good order, second is to complement each other’s’ advantages. Therefore, inclusive development means to realize the sustainable development by the lowest cost in a multi-target coordinate base.

3. Inclusive development is needed in defusing the conflict between ecological improvement and poverty reduction

Based on the analysis on the effects of Chinese ecological projects and problems we mentioned above, we assume that, the residents of project area could not sustainably benefit from the ecological improvement, and the main reason is that, the ecological project cannot continually get developed and the eco-frail areas lack long-term mechanism for the eco-protection; and the highly natural resources relying on backward development mode is the fundamental reason for hardly to consolidate the poverty reduction results. Without sustainable external inputs (such as project investment and poverty reduction fund), the ecological construction and poverty reduction will not be carried out in a deep-going way. This is because there is conflict between the ecology improvement and poverty reduction, and so is between natural resources’ protection and utilization; if one cannot effectively coordinate the these conflicts, ecological improvement will neither drive the regional economy’s growth, not promote the economic growth in a long term, thus exacerbating the poverty.

To defuse the conflicts between the two targets of ecological improvement and poverty reduction means to proceed from coordinating resources’ utilization and protection. To use the inclusive development for reference, means to let the all the residents have equal opportunities in participating the ecological management, and have an equal share of the ecological achievements, which is sustainably benefiting from the eco improvement; for those outside the project area, they could also get the reasonable compensation for suffering from the ecological improvement, thus to promote the regional economic growth. In fact, currently the residents of project area have not got equal opportunities for participating in project construction, but only got limited labor cost from labor work such as land-returning subsidy or forest managing allowance, and their lost opportunities cost have not got enough compensated. Therefore, we should inspect the ecological management and poverty reduction strategy from a new angle of view, through coordinating their targets conflicts, making them to supplement each other and getting into a positive circle.

4. Ecological poverty reduction: the inevitable choice for breaking through the bottleneck of poverty reduction in China

China is now implementing a new round of poverty alleviation and development plans, mainly focusing on the poverty caused by ecological problems. The objective of poverty alleviation and development has shifted from securing adequate food and clothing to consolidating the poverty alleviation achievements of former stage, facilitating poverty shake-off, improving the ecological environment, enhancing the development capability, and narrowing the development gap. In a sense, the poverty problem in the eco-frail area is exactly ecological problems, and the occurrence of poverty and poverty degree is closely related to eco-environmental problems (Liu Yanmei, 2005). Therefore, poverty reduction in eco-frail areas has to proceed from improving ecological environment and enhancing the carrying capacity of environment, to coordinate the ecological improvement and poverty reduction, and implement poverty-reduction strategy.

The so-called ecological poverty reduction is t to transform the economic development mode, to close the negative circle of poverty and environment damage, and to balance the targets on environment improvement and poverty reduction, through environmental protection and restoration, and it is a poverty-reduction and development mode that focuses on the ecological characters of poverty. Considering the various problems existing in the past projects such as lack of residents’ participation, restricted by the eco-protect policy or hardly benefit the results to poverty population, etc, combining with the periodic feature of the current poverty reduction work in China, we assume that the ecological poverty reduction strategy should include the following points:

1. The ecological improvement is the foundation for the poverty management and basis for development

The bottleneck restricting social–economic growth in eco-frail area lies in the low carrying capacity on resources and environment, and the rational utilization on resources and the improvement of environment is the only way to realize the sustainable development in a region. There are various causes for poverty in eco-frail area including both income poverty and capability poverty and more about the entitlement poverty. In the process of ecology deterioration, the poor suffered more than the rich, because the eco-deterioration will further press the living space of the poor people, making the acquirable resources and opportunities getting even less thus deepened the poverty status. That is to say, ecology improvement is the only measure of alleviating poverty.

Without sustainable improvement of the ecological environment, the poverty-reduction strategy characterized by “blood transfusion” can only maintain a low level of livelihood for the poor people, and the government will carry a heavy burden labeled as low efficiency and unsustainable development Development-oriented poverty reduction may continue to destroy the environment, an d locked in a negative circle of poverty and ecological damage. Without distinctive improvement of the carrying capacity on resources and environment, the poverty reduction and economic growth-oriented measures will simply be the water without source.

(2) Equal participation of the poor residents is the precondition of the sustainable ecological improvement

Intuitively, the causes of ecological poverty comes from the fact that the large population leads to a continual destroying of the environment, but one of the deep reasons is the “policy defect”, that is to say, the unfair policy has excluded parts of the low capacity people out of the development process, thus lead to a more unbalanced regional development. Just because of fearing that the poor people’s participation will affect the ecological improvement, during the implementing process of natural protection projects and etc, the local residents were considered as the burden of the project construction, and independent subsidy were provided to solve their livelihoods; meanwhile, residents also certainly considered the ecological project as the poverty reduction project, and required the project to compensate their loss due to the project construction. Apparently, to rule the residents out of the ecological projects will not only increase the cost of the project but also increase the pressure on resources and environment. All the above status is caused by lack of inclusive project policy.

The most important thing of implementing the poverty reduction strategy is to manage the regional resources including the natural resources and human resources, to mobilize all the positive factors, to make great effort to improve the environment and to build a strong basis for poverty reduction. In fact, poor people have more enthusiasm in ecological improvement since they are the direct victim of the environment deterioration, they hope to further explore their develop space and enhance the develop capacity, thus could become a sustainable motive power for improve the environment.

(3)Ecological economy is the driving force for improving the ecology and alleviating the poverty

The fast growing economy is not only the necessary condition of poverty reduction but also the core dynamics for ecological improving. The economic growth has to proceed from improving the ecological environment, prioritizing ecological industry and makes it become the pillar industry in the eco-frail area. The construction process of the ecological economy is the process of transiting economic pattern and the production mode. (Huang Songwen, 2004). The development of ecological economy will have low dependence on the natural resources, and is the sunrise industry that suits with the eco-frail area.

The advantage in eco-frail area lies in the special products and landscape resources. Based on the above features the development of the ecological economy could drive the employment in the region and attract the external investment, is a good development mode that can balance the economy growth with the eco-protection. There are many eco-industrial opportunities that suit for the eco-frail area, such as eco-agriculture, compound management on agriculture, forest and husbandry, eco-tourism, etc. All the above could push the poor people’s participation and will have an efficient poverty reduction.

 (4)The eco-compensation is the feedback on sharing the eco-improvement results

The environment deterioration in eco-frail area will not only lead to the poverty but also will spread in the whole eco-system. If the deteriorative environment could not be managed timely, it will lead to the deterioration of the surrounding area. At present, the eco-projects are mainly aimed at solving the eco-problems in the key area, such as “returning the farmland to forest” and “wind sand resources management in Beijing& Tianjin area”. The eco improvement in the project area has distinct influence for the surrounding area. As the eco-protective screen, the eco-frail area should have been subsidized as the compensation for sharing good ecological services with the surrounding area, and also as the great support for ecological management.

Ecological compensation is an economic measure for balancing the different interests, and also is the important component in the ecological poverty reduction strategy which became the guarantee of making eco-frail area that could benefit directly from eco-improvement and protection. Now the eco-compensation mechanism in China is still in the early stage, which mainly counting on the investment from central government with compensation to the important forests, grassland and wet land symbolically. Therefore, the ecological compensation could acts as a focal point in the exploration of poverty reduction strategy, through establishing the eco-compensating mechanism in different levels, the eco-frail area could obtain the external financial support thus to better realize the eco improvement and poverty reduction.

 

References:

[1]Chen Jiansheng, research on chronic poverty in eco-frail area [D]. Cheng du, 2008

[2]State Forestry Bureau, Forestry development report 2011[R]. Beijing, 2011

[3]State Statistics Bureau, rurul poverty monitoring report 2011 [R]. Beijing, 2010

[4]Ministry of environmental protection [Z], Beijing, 2008

[5]Huang Songwen, Thought on poverty reduction in the western minority group region, [J] , 2004

[6]Li Yucai, Returning farmland to forestry project is the great practice of ecological construction in China [J], 2009

[7]Li Zhou, Sun Ruomei, Research on the correlation between Ecology sensitive region and poverty-stricken area [J], 1994

[8]Liu Yanmei, Ecological poverty and its strategy in Western China [J], 2005

[9]Long Chaoyang, Economic growth, people’s livelihood construction and inclusive development [J], 1993

[10]Wang Ya, Poverty and environment-shake off the negative circle [J], 1993

[11] Yan Tingwu, Falling back in to poverty: pain and awkwardness [J]



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[1] According to the latest Statistical Communiqué of the People’s Republic of China on the 2011 National Economic and Social Development released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), in 2011, China’s rural poverty alleviation threshold is 2,300 yuan (constant 2010 CNY) in terms of per capita annual net income.

 

[2] The national Gini coefficient announced by the NBS in 2000 was 0.412. The Annual Report on China’s Progress in Building Xiaokang Society (2011) released in December 2011 indicated that 2010’s Gini coefficient is slightly higher than that in 2000.

 

[3] Data source: Poverty Monitoring Report of Rural China, 2010.