Qinling Giant Panda Habitat Community Development Study Based On Natural Resource Dependence

Ecosystem provides human being immediate needs. With the overexploitation of natural resources, ecosystem degradation has become a global problem not only for endangered rare species existence, but also Human well-being and long-term development. Local ecosystem is effectively protected by nature reserve construction, which limits the local communities’use of natural resource and moving space. Thereby the undevelopping communities socio-economic development is blocked, and making the local people the victims of biodiversity conservation, which result in the conflict between nature conservation and community development. Therefore, it is the urgent task to coordinate the conflicts aroused by resource utilization, to integrate the nature conservation and community development, to help the local people get rid of the dependence on habitat resources as soon as possible, and to realize win-win of protection and development.Regarding the nature resource dependence of habitat community development and the restrictions effect from nature protection as breakthrough point, taking the giant panda communities in Qinling as the research object, and researching how the community welfare is affected by protection, the intent of this study is to correctly understand how biodiversity conservation affecting community development, and put forward the policy recommendations from the view of policy optimization.Firstly, based on field surveys, the study analyzes the level of community development’s dependence on natural resources, the characteristics and trends. Then, analyze the influencing factors of farmers’natural resources dependence level, it has proved that,(1) as a whole area, the nature resource dependenceof communities development is in high degree, which mainly reflected in the non-income resource utilization, especially, the use of firewood, which is the rigidrequirement of the farmers, but the commercial dependence is not high;(2) individual farmers’commercial dependence on natural resources income is still very high, mainly reflected in the acquisition and utilization of non-timber forest products;(3) from regional perspective, the farmers in undevelopment area and communities located in remote mountain have a higher degree of dependence on resources;(4) from socio-economic and regional characteristics perspective, the households with large family size, more female family members, living the high altitude, etc, have a high dependence level on natural resources. Limiting these farmers on the use of natural resources blindly can not obtain good results, but block their development heavily, and exacerbate the poverty of the community residents, thus increasing the likelihood of resources damage.Secondly, through researching personal life satisfaction of community residents, it has proved that the ecological and environmental protection not only in the long-term, global perspective, but also the present, local community, play a catalytic role for human development, mainly for ecological improve the environment and the economic benefits from protection.Thirdly, based on the welfare benefit framework in Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report, the community welfare generated by protection model is built. Measuring the community welfare generated by protection combined field investigation and mathematical models, it is found that the promoting affection of current habitat resource protection for community welfare and development is not obvious. It has proved that the ecological welfare generated by protection is insufficient to cover the reduction of social welfare generated by protection which constraints the resource utilization. Community "failed on rights" is the fundamental reasons for failing to benefit from protection. Development of alternative industries, change in the pattern of resource use, promoting the key forestry ecological engineering, improving the ecological compensation system are important ways to advance the protection of the welfare of a rational allocation.By logical deduction and empirical analysis, it has been concluded that:(1) habitat community resources utilisation is closely related to the households’traditional livelihoods mode; the problems of resource use can not be avoided; and habitat communities’traditional natural resources utililzation right should be taken seriously, as well as the community demands for natural resources, especially the rigid demand in the undevelopping area and resource-rich areas;(2) the households with higher vulnerability characteristics also have higher resource dependence. On the one hand, suitable alternative industries should be developped according to farmers and resource characteristics, on the other hand, the community resources use must be standardized;(3) ecological welfare not only exists in a long time and large spatial scales, but also be reflected in the local community. The environmental improvement generated by nature conservation can be converted to the new comparative advantages and sources of interest, and has a positive effect on ecological welfare, so as to offset the constrains effect generated by nature conserve, and play a positive role in promoting habitat community development. Community resource use and management rights and interests restricted are the obstacles for welfare conversion, so the incentives and constrains compatible to policies and systems should be built to coordinate the conflict between resource protection and utilization.Based on theoretical and empirical analysis, the policy mechanism is designed for coordinating the contradiction between protection and development. Based on analysis on the community rights protection condition of existing conservation policies, the basic framework of the habitat community development policy coordination mechanism is designed, which contain "ecological compensation mode" and " specific policy coordination mode", as well as system security system, such as policies and laws system and resource management system.