Integrated Evaluation Of Payments For Ecosystem Services Programs

Since the 1990s,payment for ecosystem services programs have been regarded as the most promising way to protect ecosystems and environment,and they have been widely implemented all over the world.After the flood of the Yangtze River in 1998,China implemented a series of payments for ecosystem services policies and projects,including the Natural Forest Conservation Program,Grain to Green Program,Forest Ecological Benefits Fund and Ecological Transfer Project.Especially since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party in China,payment for ecosystem services mechanisms are playing an even more prevailing role in the construction of the ecological civilization.After investing considerable human,material and financial resources,the government officials,researchers,and other stakeholders have increasingly paid attention to the ecological and socioeconomic outcomes of these projects.However,according to existing research,the frameworks used to evaluate program performance still have room for improvements.There are significant differences among the aspects,indicators and technical level of the performance evaluations,which limits the usefulness of comparisons between case studies,and even raise questions about the credibility of some of these studies.This study conducted a systematic review of the evaluation of payment for ecosystem services programs in China,and summarized the evaluation methods,research experiences and shortcomings.It also proposed a systematic and comprehensive evaluation framework that uses rigorous analytical methods to account for ecological effectiveness,economic efficiency and social equity.Finally,this work took ecological benefit forest policy in Anji County as a case study to evaluate the performance quantitatively and synthetically.The evaluation used multi-linear regression and matching method to calculate the ecological effect and the cost-effectiveness ratio of the ecological benefit forest policy,and used confirmatory factor analysis to construct the human well-being index.The Gini coefficient was used to represent the income inequality between farmers.The results show that the ecological benefit forest policy in Anji County played a positive role in the improvement of ecosystem.After controlling for random error,the average increase of the forest area in each forest pixel ranged between 1.37%to 2.03%.These changes in forest cover were the result of the forest policy together with the influence of anthropogenic factors,such as agricultural activities,urban expansion and road construction.In terms of economic efficiency,from 2000 to 2015,the increase of each hectare of forest land needed a cumulative input between 1.32 to 1.95 million yuan,and further improvements in efficiency were still possible.In terms of social equity,the increase of human well-being index for participating households is less than that of non-participating households.The ecological benefit forest policy may have hindered the growth of human well-being and widen the gap between rich and poor farmers through ecotourism.Therefore,the government should strengthen the supervision of this policy to increase ecological benefits,implement a differential compensation mechanism to enhance economic efficiency,and put in place a mechanism to redistribute the social and economic benefits produced by the ecosystem services program and make progress in social equity issues.This paper summarizes the evaluation methods of the existing research,points out their gaps and shortcomings,and may serve as a reference for future research.The study also put forward a comprehensive and quantitative evaluation framework for the program performance,with rigorous index construction and analysis methods.Finally,this research provided some valuable suggestions for decision makers in the case study of Anji County,and proved the importance of rigorous analysis methods and multi-scale considerations in the evaluation.This work provided scientific support for optimizing performance evaluation and improving the ecological,economic and social benefits of ecosystem services programs.