Reward to the Upland Poor for Environmental Service, Food Security andor Environmental Sustainabilit

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Reward to the Upland Poor for Environmental
Service, Food Security and/or Environmental
Sustainability?  Case of Sloped Upland
Conversion Program (SLCP) in China

• XU Jianchu
• Center for Biodiversity and Indigenous Knowledge
• http//www.cbik.org

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Background

• 1998, Floods in downstream of Yangtze
• Logging Ban or Natural Forest Protection
  Program in 1998
• Sloped Upland Conversion Program in 1999
• Rational logging and upland farming contribute
  to erosion and flooding

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Timber Extraction in Diqing Prefecture, NW
Yunnan1974-1999 (Unit 1,000 m3)
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Rational beyond State decision

• No good forest to log, structure adjustment in
  state logging companies
• Too much grain production, no rooms for storage

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Incentive

• Targeted farmland gt25o
• Planted forest or grass, mono-culture, state
  recognized species
• 90USD/hectare for seedings
• unprocessed rice 2250kg/ha/year, subsidized for
  5-8 years
• 36USD/ha/year for schooling and healthcare
• Private ownership, whose land, who owns the tree

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Farmland within major watersheds of Yunnan
(Yunnan Upland Conversion Draft Plan, 2001)
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Snowball

• Inquiry from Yunnan Provincial Government
• From small-scale to large scale
• Each year subsidy
• What happen, if state no surplus grain?
• At what extend, the state can sustain financially
• Recently debate on food security

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Environmental Services

• What do environmental services mean for local
  farmers?

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Spatial Mismatch

• What are the most cost-benefit efficient scale
  for SLCP?
• Where are the hotspots?

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Time Mismatch
Services
Goods
Time
Payment for future
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Competing Knowledge SystemScientific v.s.
indigenous

• Characterization of smallholder upland farming
• Composite mosaic of land use and landscapes
• Diversity of crops agrobiodiversity
• Environment friendly technology
• Even early stage of secondary vegetation has
  little soil erosion
• Characterization of commercial large-scale
  plantation
• Rubber plantation
• Tea garden (heavy erosion in the first storm)
• Large-scale land clearing (e.g. sugarcane
  plantation)
• Tobacco (why not plantation?)
• Misperception
• Soil erosion Forest lt grass lt crops
• Land use practices is more important (e.g., sweet
  potato cultivation in swidden field in Ifugao,
  Philippines)

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3 year fallow fields
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Hani (Akha) Swidden-fallow
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Biodiversity indices in swidden-fallow succession
vegetation
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What drive land use/cover change?
Conversion without compensation
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Large-scale sugarcane plantation
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Competing Objective

• Household farmers (the poor vs. the rich)
• Local environment goods and services
• On-site and off-site
• Upstream and downstream
• National vs. international (e.g., GMS region)
• Whose agenda and objectives accounted?
• How are decisions made at which levels? (quota,
  where, which species, how)

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Priority Setting

• What are the proper incentives (opportunist
  farmers vs. converted farmers)?
• Where are the critical areas (biophysical
  environment, land use practices and
  socio-economic demands) for SLCP?
• At what scale, the collective action of
  small-sale farmers can contribute to
  environmental services? (e.g., 60 forest cover
  in Baoshan and NW Yunnan)

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Ecological PerspectiveForest Cover vs
Biodiversity
What are the impacts of these SLCP on
biodiversity and ecosystem functioning? How do
these translate into changes in ecosystem
services in short-term and long-run? Does
increasing forest cover contribute to increase
biodiversity (specie richness)? What are forest
cover and land use/cover change contribution to
runoff and water/hydrological dynamics?
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Technical Perspective

• How does SLCP affect the tradeoffs between gains
  and losses of ecosystems goods and services (e.g.
  carbon storage via plantations vs biodiverse
  secondary succession)?

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Social Application

• At what extend, does SLCP contribute to
  strengthen or weaken the customary or existing
  institutions between upland and lowland?
• SLCP as a emerging institutions or another wave
  of commercialization of plantation or
  territorilization ?

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Fairness and Equity

• How to recognize the local and historical
  initiatives for SLCP?
• e.g.
• Baoshan
• Shifting cultivators
• More than SLCP

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Household Livelihoodand Decision-making

• How does SLCP changes in ecosystem goods and
  services affect the capabilities, livelihoods and
  vulnerability of people and land use?
• What are the effects of the spatial distribution
  of human systems population density, economic
  resources, decision and power structures on the
  delivery and exploitation of ecosystem services?
  
• How do farmers make decisions under changing
  conditions of risk and uncertainty, and what are
  the implications for the sustainability SLCP?
• How do local institutions (governance, markets,
  property rights), policy, and social organization
  affect household decisions on adaptation of SLCP?

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Pathways

• What are possible pathways towards sustainable
  land practices?
• What are the possible pathways towards
  sustainable livelihoods?
• What are the possible pathways towards
  sustainable and responsible society?
• SLCP as social construction process rather than
  technical/economic solution
• Social credit and creditability (farmers access
  to information, market and decision-making)
• Financial credit and creditability (access to
  credit and financial support)
• Access to social insurance system (healthcare,
  low-income security)
• Access to training, education, job opportunities
  and alternative livelihoods