Abstract
Plantations support local economies and rural livelihoods in many mountainous regions, where poverty and a fragile environment are often interlinked. Managing plantations sustainably and alleviating poverty is a major challenge. This study reports on the findings of a household livelihood survey in the central mountainous region of Hainan Island, a global biodiversity hotspot. The survey aimed to identify rural household livelihoods, strategies to lift rural households out of poverty and potential environmental consequences of different livelihood strategies. Households were divided into five groups based on their main source of income: plantations, crops, livestock, local off-farm income and remittances. Plantations were the main source of income for 74% of households and provided 46% of the total income. Plantation land area, planting diverse tree species and intercropping were significantly associated with higher income. Reallocating land by family size could increase the proportion of households above the poverty line in the plantation group from 51.3% to 85.3%, while making only 3.3% of households worse off. Lower income households tended to apply more chemicals to plantations, which suggests that they create more strain on the environment. Improving household income through dynamically allocating plantation land and diversifying planted species could therefore be beneficial both socially and environmentally. Our results emphasize the importance of dynamic plantation land allocation and diverse plantation planting in poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability.
Highlights
An estimated 13% of the world’s people live in mountain areas [1]
Strict conservation policies have led to fewer opportunities to encroach on natural forest and bring it into agricultural production, which means that the potential to reduce poverty by expanding agricultural land is limited
Tree plantations play a key role in supporting rural household livelihood
Summary
An estimated 13% of the world’s people live in mountain areas [1]. The scarcity of available arable land, general absence of local roads to urban areas, low public investment in health and education, scarce basic infrastructure and low levels of employment contribute to a low standard of living and Forests 2020, 11, 248; doi:10.3390/f11020248 www.mdpi.com/journal/forestsForests 2020, 11, 248 reduced wellbeing [2,3]. Effective plantation management may increase peasants’ incomes and contribute to poverty alleviation. Widespread tree plantations (such as Eucalyptus spp., tropical Acacia spp. and oil palm) increase household income from wood and biofuel production [7,8]. Unlike monocultures with a single objective, polyculture has the potential to fulfill a variety of objectives [7], such as increased income, reduced vulnerability to volatile global markets for forestry products [9], better regulating services and nature conservation [10]. The shortage of land can hamper long-term income generation for local rural households in tropical forest areas [3], but appropriate forestry land reallocation and full use of current land resources might be helpful to alleviate poverty [12]. Tree plantations can contribute to economic growth and rural livelihoods [13,14]
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