China Grassland Eco-compensation Mechanism

Grassland, which accounts for more than 40% of China’s land area, is China’s largest terrestrial ecosystem. Grassland has dual attributes i.e. for animal production and ecological services, and it is the important and difficult issue for grassland sustainable development in pastoral areas how to balance grassland ecological protection and herdsmen’s income increase. To promote grassland sustainable development, China established the basic principle of pastoral development which is "integration of production and ecological service provision with ecological conservation as the priority", and began to implement Subsidy and Reward Program for Grassland Ecological Protection in 2011. Subsidy and Reward Program for Grassland Ecological Protection was currently the most important grassland eco-compensation mechanism in China. In worldwide, eco-compensation’s research mainly focused on forest and watershed, literature on grassland eco-compensation was very few. Study on grassland eco-compensation mechanism in China had slow progress only after 2011, and presented imperfect, neither formed mature analytical framework, nor had in-depth analysis of core issues. In order to improve the institution of grassland eco-compensation in China, based on three field surveys in four pure animal husbandry counties in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Gansu Province, cumulatively investigated 795 herdsmen, this thesis presented systematical study on grassland eco-compensation mechanism in China.Firstly, the author reviewed the analytical framework of eco-compensation mechanism and existing research of grassland eco-compensation, and put forward the analytical framework of grassland eco-compensation mechanism. And then, on the basis of Subsidy and Reward Program of Grassland Ecological Protection, with two types of activities, which were grazing prohibited and grassland-livestock balance, as research objects, the author conducted systematically study on core issues of grassland eco-compensation mechanism, which included baseline, compensation rate calculation, compensation rate differentiation, conditionality and post-assessment etc.Study of baseline, compensation rate calculation and differentiation of "reward for grassland-livestock balance" indicated that:grassland area was the important factor that affected whether herdsmen were overgrazing and how much the degree of overgrazing was, small and medium-sized holders were the main parts of grassland overgrazing. There existed serious non-matching relationship between livestock reduction and compensation, proportion of livestock reduction to be achieved expectantly was only 8.3%. Rates of "reward for balanced grazing" needed to be differentiated, the key of which was to aim at the main body of grassland overgrazing and take overgrazing degree into consideration.Study of compensation rate calculation and differentiation of "subsidy for grazing prohibited" etc. indicated that:using method of opportunity cost, average compensation rate for "subsidy for grazing prohibited" was CNY 8.21/mu, it was about CNY 2.29/mu higher than the average actual rate, which was CNY 5.92/mu. Rates of "subsidy for grazing prohibited" should be differentiated, and differentiation factors included opportunity costs and ecological significance, among which grassland productivity was the most important differentiation factor. Pasture’s ecological properties and herdsmen’s willingness should be comprehensively considered in choosing grazing prohibited pasture. Differentiated rules should be formulated for grazing prohibited in the type of whole pasture grazing prohibited. Grazing prohibited policy, which needed to be handled carefully, should slow the speed of grazing prohibition.Conditionality study of grassland eco-compensation indicated that:implementation of grassland eco-compensation, which presented weak supervision, did not meet conditionality. Weak supervision resulted from three factors, which respectively were i) that rates of grassland eco-compensation were low, ii) default costs (penalty) were too low and iii) probability of actual supervision was low. It was important how to allocate supervisory authority of grassland eco-compensation, and it was relative reasonable choice that herdsmen-grassland-administrators were main body with college student-grassland-administrators as supplement.Post-assessment results of grassland eco-compensation indicated that:after the implementation of grassland eco-compensation, national grassland ecological environment was improved, however, present situation of grassland overgrazing was not changed fundamentally, sample counties only completed 42% of livestock reduction task from 2011 to 2014, and in general, the task of livestock reduction was not completed well. Average theoretical income effect per herdsman was CNY-8,607, and rate of grassland eco-compensation, which should be increased by 35% of the existing rate, was low. Average real income effect per herdsman was CNY 16,686, and herdsmen did not reduce livestock according to policy requirements. Average policy "satisfactory" percentage of grassland eco-compensation, which was different between different counties, was 57%. High policy satisfaction percentage of grassland eco-compensation did not mean that the design and implementation of grassland eco-compensation was good, the higher the policy satisfaction percentage was, the higher the real income effect, but ecological performance might be not satisfactory.