Study On The Economic Sustainability Of SLCP Project

As one of the six largest forestry projects,Sloping Land Conservation Program ("SLCP") is fully implemented and has the most far-reaching effects around China.From the initiation,formal implementation to achievements consolidation,this project has got wide concentration from all walks of society.The sustainability of this project is not only a matter of achievement consolidation,but also a matter of Western Development Strategy,which has widespread effects on overall ecological safety,sustainability of economic development and social stability. The economic influences of SLCP on peasants include revenue structure impact and economic benefits from converted forestland.In order to prevent converted land from re-cultivation, participant peasant households may transfer to other more beneficial agricultural industry or non-agricultural industry.Or,these converted forestland will produce stable benefits in the future.Otherwise,these peasant households involved will probably re-cultivate the converted forestland.It has been11years since the initial implementation of SLCP,and some achievements have been made.However,what we really care about are what are the positive results of this project and whether this project is sustainable economically.This paper took three counties affiliated to Guangyuan Prefecture-a mountainous region located in the northern basin of Sichuan Province,as the sample region. These three counties are:Lizhou,Yuanba and Qingchuan,all of which have initiated SLCP project. In order to evaluate the economic sustainability of the projects, we firstly divided all the sample peasant households into two groups,namely, projects participant households whose sloping plow lands have been converted into forestland and those who have not. We evaluate the economic sustainability of the project from two aspects:total income variation of the peasant household and economic benefits of the rehabilitated land. We can decide whether this projects has reached the dual goal of both enhancing household income and readjusting the industrial structure by analyzing these two aspects. The final conclusions are listed as follows:(1)Incomes from both planting industry and breeding industry of Participant households are much less than those of non-participant households. There existed a remarkable decline of agriculture production in participant households. The project failed to readjust the income structure of the households effectively. Participant households still rely heavily on instable and low-level migrant jobs. Although income form non-farm sectors increased,people in the project region have to spend more on food and other daily consumption.Moreover, new alternative planting and breeding industries have yet been fully set up. These two factors threaten the economic sustainability of the project.(2) Economic benefits of the rehabilitated plow land has a strong influence on the sustainability of project. This paper firstly applies Logistic Model to analyze factors determining those plow land to be converted to forest land. If most rehabilitated lands have relatively high planting cost and a low yield, then the implementation of project reduces the economic loss of the participant households and will generally receive wider acceptance from the public. Otherwise, this project will have to face uncertainty and instability.Our results show that most rehabilitated land meet the standards set by pertinent policies.However,there existed a phenomenon that high-yielded plow land close to the roads are more likely to be converted into forest land,thus causing great loss to certain participant households.Secondly,the area of forestland per household is big enough to produce prominent economic benefits.But those forestland are still in the initial phase of economic harvesting, the full potential economic benefits are yet to come.From a future perspective,forestry products harvested from the rehabilitated lands will face uncertainty of the markets,and will probably do harm to the economic benefits of the participant households and the sustainability of the project as well.Meanwhile, the monotonous management modes of the existent forestland within the project area affect the economies of scale.What’s more,the incomplete forestland property has become an more obvious disadvantage as the project comes to its second phase.Ecological forests felling can no longer be forbidden as they will become mature in the near future.The fact that current existent policies have no clear indications about how to deal with the mature ecological forests will definitely pose a negative effect on peasants’devotion to ecological protection.To sum up,this paper put forward that SLCP project has come to a critical point in which its economic sustainability faces severe threatening,and thus more follow-up industry of the project is needed.As a result,some policy implications are mentioned:①Innovation and perfection of the forestland management modes are necessary,such as joint management,share-buying management etc.②Government institutions are responsible for providing skill training to the participant households and helping them hone employment skills;③Some relevant supporting facilities should be implemented to better consolidate the existent achievements;④industrialized operations should be vigorously promoted and leading enterprises can combine the peasant households with the markets so as to constitute a distribution mechanism of interest between the enterprises and the peasants.⑤Financial support is needed during the process of follow-up industry development, so provisions about forestry property mortgage should be formulated instently.