Integrated evaluation of payments for ecosystem services programs in China: a systematic review

Abstract

Introduction: During the past two decades, payments for ecosystem services (PES) program has become a popular conservation paradigm for realigning socioeconomic costs and benefits among different stakeholders. As billions of investment flows into the natural capital pool, there is growing interest to understand the ecological, economic, and social outcomes of PES programs. China is one of the countries that extensively implements PES programs. Although there is a growing interest to perform impact evaluation of China's massive PES programs, it is unclear that what existing literature has done, has not done, and should do in the future. Therefore, to guide further research and practices, we conduct a systematic review of studies on China's PES programs. Results: Our review shows that there are growing impact evaluation studies of PES programs in China. However, the spatial and ecosystem distributions of existing studies are quite uneven. Most case studies were poorly designed, rarely quantified, and evaluated without sophisticated methods. Among the three dimensions of ecological effectiveness, economic efficiency, and social equity, economic efficiency is the least studied. Discussion and Conclusion: We further discuss the challenges and opportunities and provide insights for future research. To improve the understanding and management of natural capital, we call for mainstreaming impact evaluation of ecosystem service policies in China and beyond following the state-of-art procedures.

Gospodarka Surowcami Mineralnymi - Mineral Resources Management

“…Mineral resource exploitation inevitably causes serious damage to the ecological environment (Li et al 2014;Lei et al 2016). To effectively enact ecological management over mining-area environmental pollution, the Chinese government has taken various measures and aggressively pushed for the construction of payments for environmental services (PES) (Yang and Lu 2018;Ouyang et al 2016). So far, China has established an overall PES framework with government-dominated funding sources, which is known as the system of ecological compensation (Pan et al 2017).…”

China's Environment on a Metacoupled Planet

“…As illustrated in previous sections, achieving environmental quality in one place may enhance or compromise environmental quality in other places. However, current environmental protection often focuses on a specific place (204), or one aspect of environmental, social, and economic outcomes (205). For example, without the development of suitable policies that pay attention to spillover effects, such as carbon leakages, less developed regions usually suffer environmentally, whereas more developed regions may experience environmental gains by outsourcing production (126).…”

“…Government officials are often more interested in knowing what will happen than what has already occurred. To help policymakers understand potential environmental and socioeconomic outcomes and take proactive adaptive governance measures, it is necessary to monitor indicators that drive environmental changes directly and indirectly, and to construct system models that simulate different policy scenarios (143,205). Government agencies and nongovernmental organizations should expand environmental monitoring, especially in environmentally sensitive areas and areas with severe water shortages, to socioeconomic indicators (e.g., environmental values and attitudes, and development).…”

Preferences in Farmland Eco-Compensation Methods: A Case Study of Wuhan, China

“…Eco-compensation is a way to readjust economic costs and benefits among different stakeholders to maintain social equity [10], which could internalize environmental costs and strengthen the protection of the ecological environment [11]. In developed countries and regions, eco-compensation, which is usually called Payment for Ecosystem or Payment for Environment Service, has been regarded as an important measure to promote green agricultural production [12,13].…”