China’s Grain for Green Program: A Review of the Largest Ecological Restoration and Rural Development Program in the World
Claudio O. Delang and Zhen Yuan Springer, 2014 The Grain for Green (GfG) is the largest reforestation program in the world. It was prompted by an historic 267-day Yellow River dry out in 1997, and Yangtze River floods in 1998, that caused significant economic damage and loss of life. These problems prompted the Chinese government to address the problem of the water imbalance through sweeping reforms in the forestry sector. The most important program, both in terms of people involved (124 million people, or 32 million households), money invested (over 431.8 billion Yuan by 2016, when it is set to end), and area to be reforested (14.67 million hectare of fragile cropland [4.4 million of which were planned to be with slopes of 25º or above] and an equal amount of wasteland), is the GfG. The program is meant to increase national forest areas by 10%-20%, and decrease cultivated areas by 10%.
The objectives of the GfG are both environmental and socio-economic. The environmental objectives are to alleviate the deterioration of natural ecosystems, safeguard water resources, reduce soil erosion, flooding and siltation in the rivers, and increase China’s forest cover. The socio-economic objectives, whether official or tacit, are to promote sustainable development in rural areas, reduce poverty, restructure agricultural production to make it more environmentally and economically sustainable, free labor from cultivating marginal land, and let farmers take up other opportunities, either locally or in other provinces, and help the local economy diversify (while the GfG program itself did not include subsidies or other incentives for companies to transform products [e.g. fruits] produced through the GfG, local governments sometimes encouraged such companies to locate in GfG program areas). As such, the GfG “stands out as an explicit attempt to integrate watershed restoration and community development within a single financing mechanism”. This book reviews the modes of operation, successes and failures of the GfG, 14 years after it was first implemented. This book provides a comprehensive review of Grain for Green, China’s nationwide program which pays farmers to revert sloping or marginal farm land to trees or grass. The program aims to improve the ecological conditions of much of China, and the socioeconomic circumstances of hundreds of millions of people. GfG is the largest reforestation, ecological restoration, and rural development initiative in history, combining the biggest investment, the greatest involvement, and the broadest degree of public participation ever. The book is organised in three sections. Part One reviews the history of land management in China from 1949 to 1998, exploring the conditions that led to the introduction of GfG, and comparing it to other reforestation programs. Part Two offers an overview of GfG, describing the timeline of the program, compensation paid to farmers, the rules concerning land and plant selection, the extent to which these rules were followed, the attitudes of farmers towards the program, and the way in which the program is organized and implemented by various state actors. Part Three discusses the impact of the GfG, from both ecological and socio-economic standpoints, looking at the economic benefits that result from participating in the GfG, the impact of the GfG across local economies, the redistribution of the labor force and the sustainability of the program, in particular the question of what will happen to the converted land when payments to farmers end. |