| Poverty elimination and sustainable development are the important missions of humanity and are also the top priorities of the Chinese government.Poverty alleviation and development in China has entered a new era,and Chinese government already got huge of progress in recent years.However,there are still some regions where are the "main battlefield" for poverty alleviation and poverty eradication.These special regions include the contiguous extremely poverty-stricken regions such as immigrant reservoir regions,old liberated areas,mountainous areas and ethnic minority areas.Hence,exploring effective strategies to alleviate poverty in these special regions become the main target for the Chinese government.The Three Gorges Reservoir Region(TGRR)is the largest hydropower project in the world.The environmental degradation,including soil erosion,low forest coverage,water pollution,and frequent geological disasters in this region have made the poverty problem even worse.The ecology,environment,geological disaster and poverty might have internal relations and interactions,and those related factors may have co-existence and co-prosperity relations as well as an intersection for coordinated development.Essentially,the problem of ecology,environment,geological disasters and poverty in the TGRR is highly related to social stability and sustainable development,which needs great attention from the central and local government of China and the corresponding public policies to deal with.However,the current government strategy of "treating only where it pains" in the TGRR has been proven to be "high input but low efficiency".Therefore,it is imperative to study and explore the systematic poverty reduction and sustainable development strategies focusing on poverty reduction,the coordinated development between human and nature,ecological and environmental restoration and geological disaster management.Under such circumstances,this study intends to solve the following key issues:(1)What are the impacts of ecology,environment and geological disasters on poverty in the reservoir regions such as the TGRR?(2)Are there any potential causal feedback relationships among ecology,environment,geological disasters and poverty,and what are the underlying theoretical bases behind their mutual influence and interactions?(3)As the subject of poverty reduction and the government's poverty reduction policies,what are the poverty reduction demands of the poor households in the reservoir regions?(4)What is the mechanism for poverty reduction and sustainable development in the reservoir regions,and could it be tested by empirical studies?(5)Could the poverty-stricken reservoir regions achieve systematic poverty reduction,with the consideration of poverty reduction,disaster mitigation and environmental improvement at the same time,and sustainable development ultimately?To target the above research questions,this study combines theoretical explorations with empirical researches and has done the following work:(1)it reviewed the relevant literature to design the overall research program;(2)it defined the relevant concepts,sorted out the relevant theories and conducted a literature review;(3)By using a combination of topic modelling and bibliometric methods,and based on the in-depth literature analysis of the results of the two methods,this study proposed an integrated ecology-environment-disaster-poverty conceptual framework,on the basis of which this study constructed the theoretical model for sustainable development taking environmental conservation,disaster mitigation,and poverty reduction into consideration.This theoretical model integrated the vulnerability,adaptability,resource availability and sustainability of the poor,and refined the key causal feedback loops among ecology,environment,disaster and poverty;(4)This study finished the questionnaire and in-depth interviews,and analysed the poverty causes in the TGRR based on the results of literature analysis and questionnaire at the micro level;based on the data from the yearbooks of the TGRR,this study made a cluster analysis of the development of 25 districts/counties in the TGRR,and initially revealed the distribution characteristics of these districts/counties;(5)At the district/county level,Vensim software was adopted for the system dynamics modelling of Wanzhou reservoir regions,to simulate and analyse the changes of core indicators related to poverty,environment and disaster under different policy scenarios;(6)Based on the sustainable development theory,text mining technique and system thinking perspective,this study proposed the topic modelling and system dynamics modelling(TM-SDM)analytical framework,and conducted the system dynamics modelling and simulation analysis of TGRR at the regional level;and(7)This study used the improved entropy method to evaluate the potential of sustainable development of the TGRR from the following five aspects: macro-economy,social development,natural resources,people's life and disaster reduction and environmental conservation;Finally,based on the findings and analysis results of the previous chapters,this study proposed systematic poverty reduction strategies and sustainable development policy recommendations for the TGRR.Based on the above theoretical research,empirical studies and strategy formulation,this study found that:(1)there are complex relationships among ecology,environment and poverty,and the main concern between disaster and poverty is vulnerability etc.;(2)the research clusters closely related to poverty include ecosystems,health risks and natural resources etc.;(3)appropriately increasing the proportion of disaster management under coordinated development policy scenario will be most conducive to the sustainable development of Wanzhou reservoir regions;(4)education and training policies will be most effective in reducing poverty and increasing food production;and the balanced development policy scenario would be more conducive to systematic poverty reduction and sustainable development;and(5)the overall potential for sustainable development in the TGRR has shown a relatively steady growth trend;and the poor have strong appeals of industry support,policy support,social security,and improvement of income generation capacity of the vulnerable groups.The relevant authorities should pay attention to the diversified demands and the education and training of the poor in the reservoir regions as well as the disaster management while paying attention to the balanced and coordinated development,and ultimately promote the sustainable development of the poor and the local ecology and environment.The main contribution and innovations of this study are as follows:(1)This study has constructed a theoretical model for sustainable development taking environmental conservation,disaster mitigation,and poverty reduction into consideration.In this study,the theoretical model of sustainable development taking environmental conservation,disaster mitigation,and poverty reduction into consideration has been established by comprehensively considering ecology,environment and disaster factors.(2)This study has made an attempt to conduct a research methodological innovation that combines text mining and systematic modelling approaches.This study combined deductive and inductive methods,and proposed the topic modelling and system dynamics modelling(TM-SDM)analytical framework based on the sustainable development theory,text mining technique and system thinking perspective.(3)This study has proposed systematic poverty alleviation strategies and sustainable development policy recommendations for the reservoir regions.This study adopted the modelling methods to analyse the relevant cases of the TGRR at the district/county and region levels respectively and carried out the simulation analysis under different policy scenarios.Finally,it put forward systematic poverty alleviation strategies and sustainable development policy recommendations for the reservoir regions such as the TGRR. |
PDF Full Text Request