Abstract
This study proposes a farmland ecological compensation zoning index (FECZI) and a horizontal farmland ecological fiscal payment model to assess the amount of horizontal fiscal payment in the 48 districts of the Wuhan Agglomeration of China. The results indicate that: 14 districts of Wuhan Agglomeration are classified into farmland ecological payment areas and the remaining 34 districts are compensation ones. Moreover, the largest ecological payment area is Hongshan (109,901.05 × 104 Yuan), while the lowest is Tieshan (83.69 × 104 Yuan). The largest ecological compensation area is Tianmen (–84,076.11 × 104 Yuan), while the least is Hannan (−1340.58 × 104 Yuan). The findings can be used in the reform of farmland ecological compensation as well as innovation of fiscal payment mechanism in Wuhan Agglomeration, China.
Highlights
As one of the most important quasi-public goods, farmland plays a fundamental role in food security and material production, and has lots of similar functions in green infrastructure network construction such as bio-diversity conservation, open space provision, urban green belt construction and environmental amenity
For a certain region, FEF equals the per capita average farmland ecological footprint (e f ) times population size (N): the equation can be written as: FEFi = Ni × e f = Ni × r(ci/pi) = r Nici/pi where FEFi is the total farmland ecological footprint of region i; Ni is the population in region i, which can be obtained from the Hubei Statistical Yearbook 2016, and their values for every district are listed in Appendix A. e f is per capita farmland ecological footprint, which is an indicator to quantity per capita demand on farmland
We establish a theoretical framework for farmland ecological fiscal payment and compensation according to biological capacity and ecological footprint associated with farmland preservation and development
Summary
As one of the most important quasi-public goods, farmland plays a fundamental role in food security and material production, and has lots of similar functions in green infrastructure network construction such as bio-diversity conservation, open space provision, urban green belt construction and environmental amenity. Farmland protection policies to reduce farmland loss are enforced in many parts of the world. According to those policies, territories were normally divided into free development and limited development areas for the sustainable use of resources. Despite having received attention world widely for their effectiveness in reducing farmland loss [6,7], those unbalanced protection policies have led to “windfalls” or “wipe out” phenomena for the relevant stakeholders of farmland resources, facing serious challenges in terms of economic fair and ecological justice [8,9,10]. An essential step to internalize those externalities is to provide farmland ecological compensation for farmland conservation, and horizontal farmland fiscal payments are one of the most important ways of doing this [3,13]
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