Abstract
Many payment for ecosystem services (PES) programs, such as the Slope Land Conversion Program (SLCP), are passive and require full participation by impacted households. In contrast, this study considers the alternative of “active and incomplete” participation in PES programs, in which participants are not obliged to contract their own land, and have the right to select into the program or not. This type of program has been popular over the last decade in China; however, there have been few studies on the characteristics of willingness to participate and implementation. As such, this paper uses the Choice Experiment (CE) method to explore ways for inducing effective program participation, by analyzing the effects of different regime attributes. The case study used to analyze participation utility was the Jing-Ji Afforestation Program for Ecological and Water Protection (JAPEWP), a typical active-participation forestry PES program, and a key source of water near Beijing in the Miyun Reservoir Catchment (MRC). Analyzing rural household survey data indicated that the program faces a variety of challenges, including long-term maintenance, implementation performance, cost-effectiveness, and monitoring approaches. There are also challenges with one-size-fits-all payment strategies, due to ineffective program participation or imperfect implementation regimes. In response, this study proposes several policies, including providing secure and complete land tenure to the participants, creating more local off-farm employment opportunities, designing performance-based monitoring systems that are integrated with financial incentives, applying differentiated payment strategies, providing capacity building to support forestation activities, and establishing a comprehensive implementation regime that would address these challenges. These policy conclusions provide valuable lessons for other active-participation PES programs as well.
Highlights
The higher off-farm income in the Humaying township suggests that local mining resource development may yield a more developed off-farm employment market
With insufficient willingness to participate or ineffective implementation, this kind of program faces challenges associated with long-term maintenance, implementation performance, and cost-effectiveness
This study used the JAPEWP program as a case study to explore the characteristics of rural household preferences; the goal was to induce more active and effective program participation and establish an efficient implementation regime
Summary
"Payment for ecosystem services” (PES) is an effective policy mechanism that translates the external, nonmarket value of ecosystem services into individual economic incentives that motivate people to protect and restore ecosystems [1,2,3,4,5,6]. These projects have been done around the Miyun Reservoir, the Beijing’s only surface water source for domestic water supply, and they convert land use systems to protect Beijing’s source water [53,54,55] Among these programs, as a typical case of passive participation, the PLDL program received an evaluation of the welfare impacts on the rural households [5, 17]. This research was needed due to ineffective program participation and imperfection implementation regimes in the JAPEWP program This program is a typical active-participation type of forestry PES program, in the key source water area of Beijing, the Miyun Reservoir Catchment (MRC). The study provides valuable and unique policy insights into designing active and effective programs, as well as implementing efficient program regime policies for typical emerging active-participation PES programs
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