Study On Social Impact Assessment Of Land Consolidation Projects (LCPs)

Land consolidation(LC) is an important measure to increase the cultivated land, improve the agricultural production condition and the ecological environment,and also is able to increase the agricultural output and farmers' incoming,drive the rural development.In our country,under the hard tense relations between land and man,and under the influence of the hard constraints basing on the urban-rural dual system,land consolidation has a significance sense.However,land consolidation is an action with the strong regional of land resource development,utilization and management.To some extent,land consolidation has the profound connections with landscape, biodiversity variation,the conservation of soil and water,as well as rural development. Concequently,with the deep development of LC,its economic,social and Eco-environment influences have been not be ignored.Go with paying more attention to the social impact assessment(SIA) of the project,analogy problems in the LC also attract people's study interest.At present,the study on SIA of land consolidation projects(LCPs) is being in the stage of the exploration and attempt,and has no powerful support in theory and practice.Thus,to build the correlative theory systems and develop case studies,there are more important significances in theory,practice and policy.Nevertheless,it is a vital value to realize the process and mechanism of LC,which associated with the social impact of LC.Thereout,through theory hypothesis and analysis models,the paper studied characteristics,process and mechanism in the land consolidation activities by introducing the theory of public goods.Based on it,the theory system of social impact assessment of land consolidation was built by the help of the study fruit from the SIA of engineering projects.In Chongqing City,under the austere contradictions between human activity and geographical environment,facing the situation which the big city coexists with the large rural area,the whole of assignment of social development is very difficult. Meanwhile,economic development has to endure the fragile ecosystem and the pressure of environment conservation.In recent years,land consolidation activities have already entered the stage of large-scale investment,and unfolded the new trend. Therefore,taking a case study of Chongqing City is obviously representative and typical.Basing on massive investigations and material carding,selecting 19 LCPs implemented to compose assessment-set,the paper analyzed those post projects' social impact in the regional scale by fuzzy comprehensive assessment.And then,taking an another case study of the territory renovation project of Wubao Town locating Jiangbei District,combining the correlative index system and using "with and without antitheses",the paper built an assessment framework to analyze the feasibility of the project,and discuss how to apply SIA in a specific land consolidation project.From the paper,the main findings and conclusions come to as follows:(â… ) From the developed trends of land consolidation,study on social impact assessment of land consolidation will be a new research,which will enrich the content of environmental impact assessment in the existing LCPs.(â…¡) Land consolidation has attributes of public goods,and its provision or subsiary belonging to the category of rural pulic goods is included in the rural infrastructure and ecological environment conservation.As a result,land consolidation activities not only have the general public goods characteristics,such as nonexclusion,nonrivary,external economies and so on,but have the rural characteristics of the general public goods, such as cost-gathering,decentralization and so on.Otherwise,these have own features, such as funds' channel of independence,provider-stabilization,government-leading and so on.(â…¢) The mechanism analysis of land consolidation shows that,the process which being in the form of a leading with system and policies from government,is better than the providing level by the private spontaneity form.However,in the process of using land consolidation goods,"Tragedy of the Commons "and "congestion problem" are not changed due to different providers.So,effective measures shuld be taken to guide, manage the use of land consolidaton goods.The utility function of Akerlof-Kranton suggests that,in the process of land consolidaton,utility would be increased if government' action was in line with the wishes of farmers.Oppositly,decreased. Thereout,it is very important to establish a mechanism of the public preference to express,which would change peasonal preferences into collective choices through the democratic process.Also,the study shows that the mechanism intenally effects the social impact of land consolidation.(â…£) Studying the theory on social impact assessment of land consolidation,plays an important role in guiding LCPs' layout,investment decision-making and post-evaluation.(â…¤) Results analyzing 19 LCPs of Chongqing indicated that land consolidation activities bring a series of active influences on increasing cultivate land,improving conditions of agricultural production and land productivity,reducing labor intensity, boosting the level of public participation and spiritual civilization in social-life, mending ecological environment,adjusting industrial structure of agriculture,raising regional productivity,and closing relations and so on.Yet,there also had some social risks,which have brought some adverse effects.(â…¥) Results of fuzzy comprehensive evaluation showed that the method have practical value,and be able to reflect social impact and the influenced degree due to land consolidation in the round.And then,the technical and methodological support was provided for studying on a regional social impact of land consolidation.There are many complex indexes and relations in the social impact assessment of LCPs.Results also revealed that introducing entropy-technology would have a good sense in revising the determined target-weights by use of AHP.In the remark of fuzzy comprehensive evaluation,study results displayed that,the degree of "better" which achieved 0.3583 was the highest,the degree of "general" which achieved 0.3533 was the second,the degree of "good" which achieved 0.1279 was higher than "poor" or "worse".Therefore, the comprehensive social impact assessment of Chongqing was better.Meanwhile, results also showed that,the remark "better" was better than "general" only 0.005,the sum of "good" and "better" achieved 0.4862,"poor" and "worse" still accounted for the certain proportion.Generally,in the Chongqing,the comprehensive social impact assessment of land consolidation was better,but not obvious.The result is a direct relationship with the status quo of land consolidation in Chongqing,especially with problems of system and policies.(â…¦) The study results on Wubao's territory renovation project indicated that the project would bring out better social impacts,but also implied some social risks to deserve attention and defence.Those risks mainly derived from the negative influences on regional transport,inhabitation,security,dining and so on,due to population pressure formed by a number of population movement;from being lack of environment impct assessment in some specific project layout;from changes of land ownership thanks to the need of project-building and agricultural industrialization;and from differences between the project and the local culture,enducaton,technical ability and value ideology.(â…§) To healthily promote land consolidaton sustainable development,it is necessary to improve on the system and policy related with LC.So,according to the reflected problems,the paper had put forword suggestions as follows:â… ) Please strengthen the construction of comprehensive agricultural production capacity by making LC platform and focusing on the protection of cultivate land.â…¡) In order to the depth and breath of farmers participation,the interactive public participation mechanism between requirement-expression and situation-feedback should be established.â…¢) Innovating LC model and changing government-leading into government-guiding,market-operating and public participation.â…£) It is essential to introduce the social impact assessment of investment projects including SIA for LC.â…¤) The mechanisms having standardized,highly efficient,flexible management and supervision shuld be set up.â…¥) T o seek the meeting point between land consolidation and rural development.