Assessing Controversial Desertification Prevention Policies in Ecologically Fragile and Deeply Impoverished Areas: A Case Study of Marginal Parts of the Taklimakan Desert, China

Shidong Liu, Jianjun Zhang, Jie Zhang, Zheng Li, Yuhuan Geng and Yiqiang Guo
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Shidong Liu: School of Land Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Beijing 100083, China
Jianjun Zhang: School of Land Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Beijing 100083, China
Jie Zhang: Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Zheng Li: College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 30072, China
Yuhuan Geng: Tourism College, Beijing Union University, Beijing 100101, China
Yiqiang Guo: Key Laboratory of Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation, Ministry of Natural Resources, Beijing 100083, China

Land, 2021, vol. 10, issue 6, 1-22

Abstract: Overgrazing plays an important role in the grassland desertification in global drylands. The effectiveness of policies related to grazing directly affects efforts to combat desertification and sustainable rangeland management. However, there remain questions around how the interplay of grassland desertification and poverty affects the implementation of policies. To reveal the effectiveness of the desertification prevention policy that delineates national key ecological function areas (NKEFAs), the main objective was to perform a sustainability assessment and on-site investigation in Northwest China. A parallel index system, which integrates the indices for economic input–output and material supply–demand to represent sustainability, and the indices for interview records from managers and questionnaires from residents to represent the effectiveness of NKEFA policy, was proposed to comprehensively judge the performance of NKEFA policy, and the underlying causes behind undesirable effects were further analyzed. The results indicate that (1) the performance of desertification control policy is related to socioeconomic conditions—a few counties with increased socioeconomic and land resource sustainability (SLS) are peri-urban or resource-rich; (2) the fact that the socioeconomic benefits of the NKEFA policy are not obvious to impoverished farmers greatly reduces their enthusiasm for preventing desertification; and (3) the livelihood needs and defective ecological compensation force residents with underdeveloped comprehensive quality to overdevelop or use grassland resources even though they have received subsidies for conserving grassland. It is concluded that poverty and grassland desertification interact to influence potential policy performance. Our analysis can help decision makers to formulate desertification control policies with multiple goals to achieve sustainable performance in an economy–ecology system.

Keywords: grassland desertification; ecological compensation; national key ecological functional area; poverty; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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