Evaluation On The Economic And Ecological Performance Of Sloping Land Conversion Program

With the economic development, the ecological environment problem has drawn more and more attention in China. The Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP) in China, launched in 1999, is the largest land retirement program in developing world. The goals of SLCP are to increase forest cover to prevent soil erosion on sloped cropland, reduce the land desertification, and to help farmers shift to a more sustainable structure of agricultural production and livelihood. Under the government's economic incentive policy, the program has rapidly expanded. However, some evident problems has been observed in the program design and implementation, especially in the crucial period that the first round contract has been gradually expired, how to promote the SLCP's long-term sustainable development through the improved follow-up policy has aroused the widespread concern in the society. With the field survey, this paper has evaluated the SLCP's economic and ecological performance, and analyzed the households' ex-post behavior choices after the SLCP expiration by the empirical evaluation methods. The whole research goals are to explore the relevant factors to influence the program's long-term sustainability, and provide certain theoretic evidence for the follow-up policies design.To achieve the above research purposes, using the data that comes from a household survey in three pilot provinces on SLCP- Shanxi, Gansu and Sichuan province, conducted in 2003 and 2005 by the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, this paper has analyzed the possible relevant factors that influence the ecological performance's long maintenance by the econometric methods on the basis of some descriptive statistics. The research results demonstrate that the program's economic performance is not obvious after six years execution, but the promotion effects in the local labor transfer have been significant; and the program does produce some structure effects, which means that the SLCP has produced more adversely economic impact on the low income participants, especially for farmers whose income is based on cropping. However, they have made greater contribution to the local ecological environment improvement compared with the high income participants. If the government can't properly solve the follow-up livelihood problem for these participants, there exists a high possibility that they will return the retired land to the crop production in the future. In addition, although the program has taken on certain ecological service potential, some retired plots not according with the policy and the more pressure on the non-cultivated lands, which may lead to the ultimate realization of the national ecological performance with low efficiency. Therefore, the key issue is how to establish the long-term mechanism to achieve the long-term maintenance of the ecological effects. Finally, according to the above research conclusions, this paper has provided some policy recommendations to promote the achievement of long-term sustainable development goals, which include the implementation of structural compensation polices, the consummation of forest tenure institutions, the establishment of scientific and technological support mechanisms, the improvement of food security institutions, and the establishment of follow-up long-term mechanisms.