The Role of Government in Combating Desertification

摘要

The 1998 Yangtze River flooding and recurring droughts in the Yellow River basin have heightened public awareness of the severity of Western China's ecological. The highly fragile environments of western regions in China adversely affect the livelihood and welfare of millions of poor farmers and herders, and act as a brake on the progress of economic development in some of China's poorest provinces. In response to nation-wide concerns over trends of ecological degradation, the Central Government took initiative in 1999 to implement a National Land Conversion Programme called 'Grain for Green', which requires the conversion of steep cropland to forest or grassland. China's nation-wide land conversion program offers a unique opportunity for estimating the direct and indirect value of Greenland ecosystem services, which include functions of great importance to society. Through discontinuing cultivation on steep slopes and their conversion into forests or grasslands, the program aims to promoting rehabilitation and conservation of degraded ecosystem functions to realize flood control, mitigate soil erosion, alleviate land degradation, combat sand storm generation and desertification, address conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity as well as increase storage of greenhouse gases in the terrestrial ecosystems. This paper presents an integrated biophysical and economic framework to examine the total social cost of the 'Grain for Green' program. The empirical part provides an estimation of the minimum economic value of Greenland ecosystem services in Gansu Province. In the valuation, the Government is assumed to be the trustee of natural resources and to observe current and past economic values and other factors relevant to public choices. The paper concludes with some observations on the role of Government in establishing a holistic, coherent, harmonized and transparent framework for policies and sustainable development.