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生态系统或生态系统服务（ES）提供给他们的利益维持生计。决策导致自然和生物环境的变化，在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上影响生态系统的提供，从而影响贫困水平。目前，决策支持方法缺乏一个集成的建模框架，该框架可以处理生物物理过程、社会经济行为和治理（社会做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生态系统各个方面的利益相关者网络之间的决策。一项重大的科学挑战是开发一种定量方法，将决策的生物物理效应与其对不同ES的影响联系起来，以便预测它们将如何影响这些不同尺度上的社区生计。中国云南省的特点是贫困率高，大多数穷人生活在脆弱的山地生态系统中，农业潜力低，依赖于森林斜坡提供的一系列ES。这些生态系统在维持人类福祉方面发挥着至关重要的作用，不仅在地方层面，而且在更广泛的流域、国家和国际层面（如防洪、碳封存）对社区都是如此。在当地农业、发展和林业政策集约化的推动下，对这些生态系统的开发造成了土地利用的迅速变化，从而导致土壤侵蚀、洪水和随后的生态系统损失。针对这一问题，中国政府出台了两项政策，即“退耕还林政策”和“天然林保护计划”。然而，这些由中央执行的方案对生计、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项目，建立一个景观尺度的综合生物物理模型，以评估云南省森林经营政策对生态系统的时空影响，特别是在森林保护计划和森林保护计划下的影响。我们将确定该模型与贫困指标之间的明确联系，特别是针对农村贫困人口，并利用这些工具探索森林政策和管理方案，以优化从地方到流域范围内景观保护、生态环境和扶贫效益的提供，从现在到未来。我们将使用生态系统和生计策略的参与式评估、流域尺度生物物理过程建模、空间贝叶斯网络来模拟生态系统和贫困之间的相互作用、经济评估、对治理过程的理解以及社会生态系统建模，来预测不同政策和气候情景下的生态系统供应水平和贫困。这将为中国的政策设计创造一个决策工具，并为将环境科学纳入政策制定主流的日益激烈的国际辩论提供信息。我们汇集了英国领先的学术机构（谢菲尔德大学）、知名的国际应用研究非政府组织（IISD）和在中国拥有丰富经验和良好人脉的英国私人咨询公司（Scott Wilson Ltd），共同开展前沿和相关的研究。我们将在国家（北京）和地区/地方（云南）层面与政府和研究机构建立伙伴关系，从非政府组织获得投入，并采用参与式方式让当地社区参与进来。从一开始就将他们的经验和专业知识整合到研究发展中是关键，并确保决策工具将满足他们的需求，平衡发展与保护生态系统的需求。

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.