Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability

Journal or Book Title: Biological Conservation

Keywords: china; grain-to-green program; post-program land use; sustainability; tobit; Wolong Nature Reserve

Volume/Issue: 142/8

Page Number(s): 1740-1747

Year Published: 2009

Humans have altered much of the natural land cover, resulting in ecosystem degradation and biodiversity
loss worldwide. Many countries have implemented conservation payment programs for agricultural land
conversion to counter this trend. However, the sustainability of ecosystem services from these programs
is unknown due to uncertainty about land uses when payments cease. We studied post-program land use
plans for China’s Grain-to-Green Program (GTGP), one of the world’s largest ecosystem service payment
programs, in Wolong Nature Reserve for giant pandas. Although farmers in the reserve planned to reconvertonly 22.6% of the land that was enrolled in the GTGP to agriculture after payments cease, these GTGP plots are distributed across the landscape and may be important for many ecosystem services. Along with regional differences, the amount of GTGP land households planned to reconvert was significantly reduced by the respondent’s age and off-farm household income and was significantly increased by the number of household laborers and total amount of land the household had enrolled in the GTGP. Thus, regional, demographic and economic factors should be considered to more efficiently sustain conservation benefits from payment for ecosystem service programs.

DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2009.03.012

Type of Publication: Journal Article