Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.3 Studies on Sloping Land Conversion Program and Limitations
2.3.4 Limitations of the Existing SLCP Studies
Since study results of SLCP’s ecological effects were overwhelmingly positive, the discussion here focuses on studies on the socio-economic impacts and sustainability of the program. Despite the valuable findings provided by existent literature, there are critical limitations to be overcome in terms of outdated survey data, overlooked study regions and methodology shortcomings.
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These hypothetical neighbours’ behaviours were considered an indication of “social norms” among farmer households (Chen et al 2009 a).
Firstly, most of the existing SLCP case studies were based on surveys conducted around 2005 or even earlier. Given China’s rapid growth and change in the last decade, data from those case studies is becoming outdated and the corresponding findings may be no longer applicable to the current situations. New case studies conducted in more recent years are in great need to provide updated information and insights regarding SLCP. Secondly, multiple studies have indicated that there were substantial regional disparities in SLCP’s socio-economic effects and farmers’ post- program land use decisions (Wang et al. 2007; Chen et al. 2009b; Grosjean and Kontoleon 2009; Song et al. 2014a), which means sufficient studies in different regions are important for better understanding the local implementation and impact of this program in China. However, current SLCP studies are too focused on several provinces such as Sichuan and Guizhou while the program has been implemented in 25 provinces. Only one SLCP study has been found in literature to conduct a survey with merely 44 farmer households in Hubei Province 18
Thirdly, although the impact of the program on participants’ livelihood is one of the most sought research themes in SLCP literature, many of the existing studies used rather simple and general survey questions to investigate this issue, such as “How has your family’s livelihood been influenced by SLCP” (Song et al. 2014a) or a yes/no question to the statement of “The SLCP adversely affected my income” (Cao et al. 2009). There is a lack of detailed information about which crops/trees farmers planted in the sloping land before and after participation in the SLCP and the income generated from the crops/trees. Such detailed information can help to better understand farmers’ livelihood under the SLCP and provide quantitative evidence of the program’s socio-economic impact.
(Song et al. 2014a). More case studies in those overlooked provinces and regions are necessary to fill in this literature gap.
Fourthly, although some SLCP studies included both participant and non- participant farmers for comparative or integrated analysis (Uchida et al. 2007; Grosjean and Kontoleon 2009; Li et al. 2011), these studies did not
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This survey is part of an integrated survey in three provinces with a total of 146 farmer households. The Danjiangkou Reservoir is located in Hubei Province. But the survey was conducted in a township near Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei Province, which is over 350 km away from the Danjiangkou Reservoir.
differentiate the non-participant farmers who have no qualified sloping land for the program19 (simply referred to as unqualified farmers hereafter) from those who have qualified land but were truly unwilling to participate (referred to as unwilling farmers). The unqualified farmers will not be influenced by any improvement in the design and implementation of SLCP anyway unless there is a fundamental change in the program’s criteria for land qualification. So there is hardly any relevance to include them in analysis of farmers’ willingness to participate in a new (updated) SLCP20
Fifthly, the current SLCP has been criticized for adopting uniform payment and contract length which neglects the regional heterogeneity of China (Xu et al. 2007; Liu et al. 2008), thus increasing local communities’ input has been suggested in program design and implementation in order to adapt to local environmental and economic contexts (Bennett 2008). Although the possibilities of farmers’ reconverting forestland back to farmland after the current SLCP contract expiries have been widely reported in literature (Uchida, Xu and Rozelle 2005; Cao et al. 2009; Chen et al. 2009b; Wang and Maclaren 2012; Song et al. 2014a; Yang and Xu 2014), a few studies have further investigated what adjustment in annual payment, contract length or other program attributes the local households prefer to continue with SLCP. As for the only two Stated Preference/choice studies investigating this issue, shortcomings are not negligible.
. Moreover, as gradient is a highly influential factor to land productivity, the income received from flat (unqualified) land can be substantially higher than that from sloping land (Yang and Xu 2014). It could be misleading to examine SLCP’s impact on farmers’ livelihood by comparing the unqualified farmers and participant farmers disregarding the topographic characteristics of their land (Uchida et al. 2007; Li et al. 2011). A better strategy is to exclude unqualified farmers from the survey and compare the participant farmers and those who have qualified sloping land but did not take part in the SLCP.
As reviewed above, Chen et al. (2009a)’s study provided interesting insight that social norms (neighbour behaviour of reconverting or keeping enrolled
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Only land with gradient larger than 25 degrees in the south of China or 15 degrees in the north is qualified for the SLCP.
20
No studies clarified that they only included those truly “unwilling farmers” as non-participant farmers in analysis, nor have they discussed the possibility of the fundamental change in land qualification, so it is very likely that they have indeed overlooked this issue.
forestland after the current SLCP expires) could play an important role in farmers’ post-program land use decisions, but they overlooked another important program attribute of SLCP, i.e. the percentage of economic trees allowed to be planted in the enrolled sloping land, which were proved be significantly influential on farmers’ choices by Grosjean and Kontoleon (2009). Moreover, incorporating neighbour behaviour in the policy scenario is useful to reveal interesting insights but cannot provide practical policy suggestions since neighbour behaviour is not adjustable by policy makers of SLCP. With regard to Grosjean and Kontoleon (2009)’s study, they excluded another important program attribute, namely contract length, from policy scenarios and arbitrarily fixed it at 30 years. Such research design lost the ability to reveal farmers’ preference for different contract lengths which is useful information for designing more flexible SLCP. Additionally, it is also arguable that Grosjean and Kontoleon (2009) adopted the assured delivery of program payment as one of the program attributes. Unduly and incomplete delivery of contracted payment should be considered as a problem in program implementation instead of an attribute of program design. It is not surprising that farmers would forgo some stated amount of payment to ensure the delivery of certain less payment, but asking farmers to trade-off program payment and assured delivery is less informative than revealing the trade-off between payment and contract length if the study aims at providing policy suggestions to improve the design of SLCP. The review and discussion in this section indicate that the limitations of existing studies on SLCP call for: 1) updating case studies, especially in the overlooked province/regions; 2) better examination on the effect of the SLCP on participants’ livelihood and 3) further studies of farmers households’ preference for the design of SLCP.