Table Of ContentClaudio O. Delang · Zhen Yuan
China’s Grain
for Green
Program
A Review of the Largest Ecological
Restoration and Rural Development
Program in the World
China’s Grain for Green Program
Claudio O. Delang (cid:129) Zhen Yuan
China’s Grain for Green
Program
A Review of the Largest Ecological
Restoration and Rural Development
Program in the World
Claudio O. Delang
Zhen Yuan
Department of Geography
Hong Kong Baptist University
Kowloon Tong , Hong Kong
ISBN 978-3-319-11504-7 ISBN 978-3-319-11505-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-11505-4
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Pref ace
C hina has always had a problem of inadequate supply, low quality, and uneven
g eographic distribution of forest resources. However, the second half of the twenti-
eth century saw the greatest deforestation in the country’s history, as the rapid
increase in the nation’s population, coupled with rapid economic development,
resulted in enormous consumption of forest resources. Forest coverage decreased
from 30–40 % in 1949 to about 10 % in the late 1990s. By the end of the twentieth
century, while China’s population accounted for 22 % of the world’s population, the
forest area in China was only taking up 4.1 % of the world’s land mass, and the
stocking volume was merely 2.9 % of the world’s total (Lei 2002). This was clearly
not suffi cient to meet the production and livelihood needs of the country. However,
even more pressing were the environmental problems that decades of deforestation
had created.
Excessive commercial logging, and the cutting down of the forest on hillsides for
cultivation in the upper and middle reaches of the river basins, led to severe conse-
quences in downstream areas. Using data from China’s second soil census of the
early 1980s, Yang (1994) found that around 8 % of the country’s cultivated land was
affected by “intensive” erosion, and another 26 % was affected by “light to medium”
erosion. By the turn of the millennia, 170 million ha, 18.2 % of the country’s land,
were desertifi ed, affecting 400 million people. On the other hand, 360 million ha of
soil nation-wide were eroded, which accounted for 38.2 % of the country’s total
land area, or more than three times the world average (Lei 2002; Huang 2000). Soil
losses reached 5 billion tonnes annually (Lei and Zhu 2002; World Wildlife Fund
and State Forest Administration 2003).
The situation was particular dire in the watersheds of the Yangtze and the Yellow
rivers. The main channels of Yangtze River fl ow through 11 provinces in China.
The size of the river basin is roughly 1.8 million km 2 , or 18.75 % of China’s land
area. The river basin is an extremely important area for the economic and social
development of China, since it produces 42 % of China’s GDP and hosts 43 % of
the country’s fi xed investment. The Yellow River basin covers over 900,000 km 2 ,
and fl ows through nine provinces. With a total population of some 190 million
v
vi Preface
p eople, it is not only economically, but also culturally, important, being the
birthplace of the ancient Chinese civilization.
According to offi cial estimates, at the turn of the century the soil erosion area in
the Yangtze and Yellow river basins reached 75 million ha, with sediments of over
2 billion tonnes (Li 2001). Overgrazing, and in particular farming on slopes, were
the most important causes of soil erosion and desertifi cation. Xu et al. (2006a)
e stimated that of the 34.07 million ha of farmland in the Yangtze and Yellow river
basins, 4.25 million ha were on slopes of 25° or greater. Farming such slopes was
estimated to increase erosion to 4,000 tonnes per km 2 per year. With proper forest
coverage, 80–90 % of that erosion could have been prevented (Yin et al. 2005).
On the other hand, the Loess Plateau (containing the upper watershed of the Yellow
River) was estimated to contain 22 % of China’s eroded land, and 19 % of China’s
cultivated area affected by “intensive” water erosion. On the Loess Plateau, uncon-
trolled grazing and poor maintenance of rangelands were the main causes of the
extensive loss of grass cover, and contributed to soil erosion.
I ncreased soil erosion silted streams, reduced the hydraulic capacity of the rivers,
and increased the frequencies of fl ooding and drought (Smil 1993; World Wildlife
Fund and State Forest Administration 2003). While during historic times there were
regular fl ooding disasters in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, towards the end
of the twentieth century the situation reversed. During the dry season, the water fl ow
sometimes ceased in parts of the lower reaches. This happened for the fi rst time in
1960. After 1972 it happened frequently, and since 1992 it has been happening every
year. In 1997, there was no water discharged to the sea for 330 days (Fu et al. 2004),
and the water fl ow was interrupted for up to 700 km upstream from the river mouth.
The seasonal interruption of the water fl ow cannot only be blamed on deforestation.
The diversion of water for urban and farmland water supply also takes some blame.
However, deforestation upstream contributed to the problem (Wang et al. 2001).
From June to September 1998 there were devastating fl oods in the middle reaches
of the Yangtze River. The fl ood affected 180 million people, and resulted in some
4,000 death and 15 million homeless. A total of 13.3 million houses were damaged
or destroyed, and 10 million ha were evacuated. The economic losses accounted for
some US$26 billion. Many environmental experts blamed these fl oods on soil ero-
sion and deforestation (World Bank 2001). For example, Zong and Chen (2000)
argue that the amount of precipitation over the catchment and the fl oodwater
discharge from the upper basin did not exceed the historical maximum. Rather than
being caused by the increasing precipitation, downstream fl oods were caused by
extensive reclamation of lakes and fl uvial islands, deforestation in the catchment
area, and soil erosion and the resulting increasing deposit of sediments in reservoirs,
which reduced their storage capacity.
B y the late 1990s, it became obvious that China was facing serious environmen-
tal problems caused by decades of mismanagement of forest resources. At the same
time, the Chinese government estimated that over the next 50 years the demand for
Preface vii
forest resources in China would reach at least 18.5 billion cubic meters, 1.6 times
the forest resources that existed in the late 1990s (Lei 2002). These problems
prompted the government to act, and in the late 1990s the Chinese government
introduced a number of reforestation and ecological restoration programs, the most
important of which was the Grain for Green (GfG) (also called Slope Land
Conversion Program, SLCP).
The GfG was put in place primarily to reconvert steep slopes that had been
cleared for farming to their original vegetation (trees or grassland), thereby reduc-
ing siltation in the rivers. As the prime managers of the reforestation processes, the
farmers would be compensated for their labor and loss of agricultural land.
Therefore, the GfG is not only a reforestation and ecological restoration program,
but also a poverty alleviation program. The GfG started in 1999 in three selected
provinces, and expanded nation-wide starting from 2000.
Bennett (2008) and Wu et al. (2009) reported that the program planned to convert
a total of 32 million ha of land to its original vegetation (trees or grass) during the
period from 2001 to 2010: 14.66 million ha of farmland (4.4 million of which was
estimated to be on land with slopes of 25° or above), and 17.33 million ha of barren
mountainous wasteland. By 2010, the forest and grass cover of the scheme’s target
area would be raised by 5 %; 86.66 million ha of soil- and water-eroded area would
be brought under control, and 103 million ha of sand-fi xation areas would be
established (Lei 2002).
The GfG is the reforestation, ecological restoration, and rural development
p rogram with the largest investment, greatest involvement, and broadest degree of
public participation in history. The program improves the ecological conditions of
much of China, and the socioeconomic circumstances of hundreds of millions of
people. The GfG directly involves 124 million people (32 million households) in
1,897 counties in 25 provinces and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps
(Mao et al. 2013). The program was set to end 8 years after it initially began, but
was extended for another 8 years in 2007. It is now set to end starting in 2015 (later
in areas where it started later). By the end of 2015, the government is expected to
have invested no less than Yuan 431.8 billion (National Development and Reform
Commission 2008).
T his book reviews the literature pertaining to, or related to, the GfG, published
up to 2014. The book is organized in three parts. Part I introduces the conditions that
led to the introduction of the GfG, and compares the GfG to the other main refores-
tation programs in China. Part II gives an overview of the GfG, describing the time-
line of the program, the compensation paid to farmers, the rules concerning land and
plant selection, and the extent to which these rules were followed. It also discusses
the attitudes of farmers towards the program, and the way in which the program is
organized and implemented by various state actors. Part III discusses the impact of
the GfG, both from an ecological and from a socio-economic standpoint. The focus
is on the socio-economic consequences of the program, and in particular the
viii Preface
economic benefi ts that result from participating in the GfG, the impact of the GfG
on the local economies, and the redistribution of the labor force. We also consider
the sustainability of the program, since the question arises as to what will happen to
the converted land when payments to farmers end.
Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong Claudio O. Delang
Zhen Yuan
Contents
Part I Why the Grain for Green?
1 Management of Forest Resources from 1949 to 1998 .......................... 3
Introduction ............................................................................................... 3
Historical Land Policies in China.............................................................. 4
From Independent Farms to Communes ............................................... 6
The Great Leap Forward ....................................................................... 7
The Cultural Revolution ........................................................................ 9
The Post-1978 Reforms ............................................................................. 10
The Forest Reforms of the 1980s .......................................................... 11
Forestland Tenure Reform in Rural Villages ......................................... 12
The Forest Law of 1984 ........................................................................ 15
2 China’s Reforestation and Rural Development Programs .................. 19
Introduction ............................................................................................... 19
Drivers Behind the Chinese Government’s
Response to Deforestation ......................................................................... 20
The Six Reforestation Programs ............................................................... 22
The Grain for Green Program (GfG) ..................................................... 22
The Natural Forest Protection Program (NFPP) ................................... 24
The Shelterbelt Development Programs (SDP) ..................................... 26
The Desertifi cation Control Program (DC) ........................................... 29
The Wildlife Conservation and Nature Reserve Development
Program (WCNR) ................................................................................. 29
The Fast-Growing and High-Yielding Timber Plantation
Program (FHTP) .................................................................................... 30
Why the Key Forestry Programs? ............................................................. 30
New Forestry Paradigms in China ............................................................. 32
ix
