Abstract
This paper evaluates the regionalization of soil and water conservation in China, decades after its widespread implementation across the country. The authors mainly address two questions. First, to what extent could achievements in soil erosion and water management be attributed to regionalization? Statistics and cases show that enhancement of research on soil erosion and ecology, popularization of technologies and mathematical methods and more complete databases are the main improvements to theoretical research; the distribution of region-specific measures and monitoring sites and the development of a responsibility system are the main impacts on practice. Second, is there any weakness to regionalization? Econometric and management methods are currently not well integrated into the process of regionalization; indicators used for division lack standardization, thus weakening the accuracy of regionalization; also, there are limits to its implementation. Using scenario analysis, the authors discuss the possibility of involving economics and management science in the process of regionalization and the approach to combine qualitative analysis with quantitative analysis, while also arguing the importance of establishing an effective cooperation mechanism between different government departments and between government and actors. For government, the evaluation could be helpful to recognize the success, strengths and weaknesses of regionalization of soil and water in China and hence to take further steps to formulate region-specific policies dealing with complex environmental and economic problems in different regions.
Highlights
Worldwide efforts at geographical regionalization have had a long history
Considering these, regionalization of soil and water conservation in China was aimed at dividing a certain area into several functional regions, with the hope that region-specific management rather than site-specific management could be applied without too much adjustment in each region [14,15]
Results show that regionalization drives the research on soil and water conservation, and other disciplines, especially ecology, popularize the “3S” technology and mathematical methods and help database construction
Summary
Worldwide efforts at geographical regionalization have had a long history. Several efforts of regionalization developed by government agencies and scholars for improved understanding of nature or social principles are widely known to the public. The first regionalization scheme of soil and water conservation in China, the Water and Soil Conservation Plan of the Middle Yellow River, was developed by the Yellow River Conservancy Commission in 1955 [16] By this scheme, the Loess Plateau was divided into eight regions, and each region was assigned different jobs for soil erosion and water management in the five years. The Loess Plateau was divided into eight regions, and each region was assigned different jobs for soil erosion and water management in the five years This original effort was interrupted by the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961) and by the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) until Chinese economic reform was implemented in 1978. After 2011, the first national regionalization of soil and water conservation (Appendix A), which divided the country into eight super-regions (first-level), 40 regions (second-level) and 115 sub-regions (third-level), was approved by the Ministry of Water Resources [14], and finer distinctions based on this scheme are being made by local governments and institutions within their administrative areas [17,18,19,20]
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