The Study On The Relationship Between Ecological Conservation And Rural Households' Income Improvement In Tibet

In the new historical period,Tibet is faced with the dual task of improving the quality of ecological environment and enhancing the income level of its farmers and herdsmen.Therefore,it is necessary to re-examine the ecological environment protection and the livelihood of its farmers and herdsmen.The protection and construction of ecological environment in Tibet is not only related to Tibet's ecological security,economic development and harmonious social structure,but also related to China's national ecological security.The relationship between the increase of farmers and herdsmen's income and the protection of ecological environment is both contradictory and unified,especially for Tibet,where the poverty-stricken areas have a high degree of unity and overlapping with the biodiversity-rich areas.The farmers and herdsmen are the direct users of natural resources in Tibet.They are also direct participants in ecological protection.So studying the contradiction,conflict and the coordination mechanism between the ecological protection of Tibet and the increase of farmers and herdsmen's income from the perspective of farmers and herdsmen has a very important practical significance.This study first analyzed the relationship between the ecological protection and the increase of farmers and herdsmen's income in Tibet,and then analyzed the functional mechanism and influence degree between regional farmers and herdsmen's income increment and the ecological protection from the micro-level of farmers and herdsmen,so as to provide support to the designing of the coordination mechanism between them.The main conclusions of this study are as follows:First,the farmers and herdsmen in the study regions are not rich in farmland resources,and their farmlands are usually fragmented,so it is difficult for them to carry out large-scale operation.Their forest resources are not rich either.The public forest particularly accounts for 68.07%of their total forest land,while the natural grasslands available to them have different degrees of degradation.Second,the production patterns the study regions are backward.In their crop structure,the proportion of grain crops is too large,mainly for self-suficiency,which contributes little to the income of farmers and herdsmen's incomes.Due to the implementation of the project of returning grazing land to no grazing land(the no-grazing land project),a lot of farmers and herdsmen cannot have enough feed for their livestock.The existence of herdsman capital constraints makes it difficult to change the way of animal husbandry in the short term.Third,farmers and herdsmen's income from natural resource use makes up 55%of their total annual household income,while the livelihoods of 7%of farmers and herdsmen depend on natural resources for more than 90%.This shows that farmers and herdsmen are mainly dependent on natural resources.In the case of absolute income from natural resources,the per capita natural resource income of the richest group is 4.1 times the poorest group,indicating that although the natural resources income is important to impoverished farmers and herdsmen,the affluent farmers and herdsmen get more of natural resources.Fourth,the majority of farmers and herdsmen still have relatively low cognition of the laws and regulations related to ecological protection.More than half of the respondents believe that the overall ecological environment in the past decade has changed for the better.From the attitude of farmers and herdsmen on ecological protection,the majority of farmers and herdsmen have a more active attitude towards the protection of natural resources.The Tibetan people's ecological consciousness is very strong.They regard man and nature as an interdependent whole.Fifth,farmers and herdsmen who choose economic forest in the returned farmland get more income and higher satisfaction.Compared with farmers and herdsmen in rest grazing and rotational grazing,farmers and herdsmen in grazing prohibition because the no-grazing land project have a satisfaction drop of 68.3%.The gains and losses of farmers and herdsmen in ecological protection are related to their attitudes towards ecological protection.Sixth,the implementation of the project of returning grazing land to no grazing land,the biggest difficulty faced by herdsmen in livestock production is insufficient forage.The non-agricultural income of the grazing group is higher than that of the non-returning group,which indicates that the no-grazing land project released the farmers and herdsmen from the grassland to a certain extent,which is beneficial to the non-agricultural employment of farmers.Seventh,the impact of returning farmland to forest on the income of farmers and herdsmen is positive,the remaining three projects(the no-grazing land project,the ecological public welfare forest project,and the protected area project)on the income of farmers and herdsmen are negative.Eighth,with the consideration of the heterogeneity,under PSM estimation,the effeect of ecological projects on the income of peasants and herdsmen is obviously reduced(whether positive or negative).And evaluated by conventional linear regression,the effect of ecological projects has been obviously overestimated.This paper has the following possible innovations:(1)Based on the status quo of the actual ecological situation in Tibet and the economic income of farmers and herdsmen,combined with the national and ethnic policies,it is suggested that the Tibetan farmers and herdsmen should increase their income and protect the Tibetan ecology.In a certain extent,there is certain exploratory and novelty to research and solve the current "three rural" problems in Tibet:(2)Using the method of combination of questionnaire and statistical data,the interactive relationship between ecological protection and sustainable increase of farmers and herdsmen in Tibet is deduced and analyzed through the macro and micro data empirical model,which explores a new viable alternative and can be used to study the ecological and economic sustainable development of Tibet.