Ecosystem service sustainability and poverty reduction under land use change: A case study in Yunnan Province, China

世界上许多最贫穷的人依靠维持生计的生态系统或生态系统服务为他们提供的利益。决策导致物质和生物环境的变化，从而影响从地方到全球的空间尺度和从现在到几个世纪的时间尺度的贫困水平的提供。目前，决策支助办法缺乏一个综合模型框架，能够处理生物物理过程、社会经济行为和治理(社会作出决策和分享权力的结构和过程)之间的相互作用，并提供工具来支持管理环境各个方面的利益攸关方网络中的决策。一项重大的科学挑战是开发一种量化方法，能够将决策的生物物理效应与其对不同环境的影响联系起来，以便预测它们将如何影响这些不同规模的社区的生计。云南省中国的特点是贫困率高，大多数贫困人口生活在脆弱的山区生态系统中，农业潜力低，依赖于森林覆盖的斜坡提供的一系列生态系统。这些环境不仅在地方范围内，而且在更广泛的集水区、国家和国际范围内的社区(如防洪、碳封存)方面，在维持人类福祉方面发挥着至关重要的作用。在加强当地农业、发展和林业政策的推动下，对这些生态系统的开发造成了土地利用的迅速变化，导致了土壤侵蚀、洪水和随后的生态系统损失。对此，中国政府出台了两项政策，即退耕还林政策(SLCP)和天然林保护计划(NFPP)。然而，这些集中执行的方案对生计、环境服务供应和更广泛的环境造成了负面影响。我们将开发一个联合体项目，建立一个综合的景观-尺度生物物理模型，以评估云南森林经营政策对生态系统的时间和空间影响，特别是在SLCP和NFPP下产生的影响。我们将确定这一模式与贫困指标之间的明确联系，特别是农村贫困人口的贫困指标，并利用这些工具探索森林政策和管理选择，以优化从地方到集水区范围内、从现在到未来的景观保护、生态系统和减贫惠益的交付。我们将使用对可持续发展和生计战略的参与性评估、流域规模生物物理过程的模拟、空间贝叶斯网络来模拟可持续发展与贫困之间的相互作用、经济估值、对治理进程的理解以及社会-生态系统建模，以预测在不同政策和气候情景下可持续发展的供应水平和贫困。这将为中国的政策设计创造一个决策工具，并为国际上日益激烈的关于将ES纳入政策制定主流的辩论提供信息。我们汇集了英国一家领先的学术机构(谢菲尔德大学)、一家专注于应用研究的知名国际非政府组织(IISD)和一家在中国(Scott Wilson Ltd.)拥有成熟经验和出色人脉的英国私人咨询公司，以产生既尖端又相关的研究成果。我们将在国家(北京)和区域/地方(云南)层面与政府和研究机构发展伙伴关系，吸收非政府组织的意见，并采用参与性方式让当地社区参与进来。从一开始就将他们的经验和专门知识融入研究开发是关键，并确保决策工具将满足他们的需要，平衡发展需要和保护环境。

Many of the poorest people in the world rely on the benefits provided to them by ecosystems, or ecosystem services (ES), at a subsistence level. Decision-making leads to changes in the physical and biological environment, affecting the provision of ES, and thus levels of poverty, at spatial scales from local to global, and temporal scales from the present to centuries. Currently, decision-support approaches lack an integrated modelling framework that can cope with the interactions between biophysical processes, socio-economic behaviours and governance (the structures and processes by which society makes decisions and shares power), and provide tools to support decision-making among the web of stakeholders which manage various aspects of ES. A major scientific challenge is to develop a quantitative approach that can link the biophysical effects of decisions with their impact on different ES in order to predict how they will affect the livelihood of communities across these various scales. Yunnan Province, China, is characterised by high rates of poverty, most of the poor living in fragile mountainous ecosystems with low agricultural potential and dependent on a range of ES provided by the forested slopes. These ES play a vital role in sustaining human well-being, not just at the local scale, but also for communities at the wider catchment, national and international scales (e.g. flood control, carbon sequestration). The exploitation of these ES, driven by intensification of local agriculture, development and forestry policies, has caused rapid land-use change, which has led to soil erosion, flooding and the subsequent loss of ES. Responding to this the Chinese government has introduced two policies, the Sloping Lands Conversion Policy (SLCP), and the Natural Forest Protection Programme (NFPP). However, these centrally enforced programmes have led to negative impacts on livelihoods, ES provision and the wider environment. We will develop a consortium project to build an integrated landscape-scale biophysical model to assess the temporal and spatial impacts on ES of forest-management policies in Yunnan, especially those arising under the SLCP and NFPP. We will identify the explicit linkages between this model and poverty indicators, particularly for the rural poor, and use these tools to explore forest policy and management options that optimise the delivery of landscape protection, ES and poverty alleviation benefits, across local to catchment scales, now and into the future. We will use participatory assessment of ES and livelihood strategies, modelling of catchment scale biophysical processes, spatial Bayesian Networks to model the interaction between ES and poverty, economic valuation, understanding of governance processes, and social-ecological system modelling, to predict the level of ES provision and poverty under different policy and climate scenarios. This will create a decision tool for use in policy design in China and inform the growing international debate about bringing ES into the mainstream of policy-making. We bring together a leading UK academic institution (University of Sheffield), a high profile international NGO specialising in applied research (IISD) and a UK private consultancy with proven experience and excellent contacts in China (Scott Wilson Ltd), to produce research that is both cutting edge and relevant. We will develop partnerships with government and research institutions at the national (Beijing) and regional/local (Yunnan) level, gain input from NGOs and using participatory approaches to involve local communities. Integration of their experience and expertise into the research development from the outset is key and ensures that the decision-tool will meet their needs, balancing the need to develop with the conservation of ES.