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Ecological restoration and conservation are primary components of sustainable development around the world, particularly during the contemporary era of climate change. However, restoration and conservation are not free; they consume huge amounts of resources that would otherwise support social and economic development. Therefore, excessive conservation creates a risk of creating rather than eliminating poverty. Unfortunately, scientists have largely ignored the balance between these contrasting goals. Here, we discuss the concept of finding the threshold that represents a suitable balance between ecological conservation and economic development, thereby maximizing the benefits for both humans and the environment and promoting sustainable development. To demonstrate the concept, we examined China's ecological restoration achievements and discussed some of the unforeseen negative consequences that accompanied these achievements to discuss how future policies could better balance ecological and socioeconomic goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To protect the global ecological environment and prevent threats to human safety and property, nations around the world have invested heavily in ecological restoration programmes. However, we do not know whether these investments have been repaid by the resultant benefits.To answer this question, we developed an improved method of quantifying costs and benefits that accounts for more of the costs associated with ecological restoration, thereby letting us calculate the net benefit.To demonstrate this method, we analysed the Grain for Green Program (GGP), which is the world's largest ecological restoration programme. We found that the increase in net benefits amounted to a total of 530.1 × 109 RMB/year in 2017. However, 11 of China's 25 provinces have incurred net losses due to high cost increases and low increases in benefits under the GGP.Synthesis and applications. Because compensation payments to farmers and herders whose livelihoods were disrupted by implementation of the Grain for Green Program only accounted for 0.8% of the programme's cost, improving compensation payments will be essential to its success. Assessing Grain for Green Program the largest ecological restoration programme in the world will provide guidance for ecological protection and restoration policies around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land degradation is a global problem that seriously threatens human society. However, in China and elsewhere, ecological restoration still largely relies on a traditional approach that focuses only on ecological factors and ignores socioeconomic factors. To improve the effectiveness of ecological restoration and maximize its economic and ecological benefits, a more efficient approach is needed that provides support for policy development and land management and thereby promotes environmental conservation. We devised a framework for assessing the value of ecosystem services that remain after subtracting costs, such as the opportunity costs, costs of forest protection, and costs for the people who are affected by the program; that is, the net value of ecosystem services (NVES). To understand the difference between the value of a resource and the net value of the ecosystem service it provides, we used data on VES, timber sales, and afforestation costs from China's massive national afforestation programs to calculate the net value of forest ecosystem services in China. Accounting for the abovementioned costs revealed an NVES of ¥6.1 × 1012 for forests in 2014, which was 35.9% less than the value calculated without accounting for costs. As a result, the NVES associated with afforestation was 55.9% less than the NVES of natural forests. In some regions, NVES was negative because of the huge costs of human‐made plantations, high evapotranspiration rates (thus, high water opportunity costs), and low forest survival rates. To maximize the ecological benefits of conservation, it is necessary to account for as many costs as possible so that management decisions can be based on NVES, thereby helping managers choose projects that maximize both economic and ecological benefits. Article impact statement: Accounting for the effects of costs on the value of ecosystem services provides a net value that more strongly supports policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CO2-responsive Pickering emulsions were fabricated on the basis of polymeric nanoaggregates with adjustable surface wettability. The static Pickering emulsion system provides an efficient and sustainable platform for in situ separation and reuse of catalysts in biphasic reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than 150 years ago, Marx predicted that the working class would become "the gravedigger of capitalism," a seemingly prescient prediction as socialism flourished between the two World Wars. However, traditional capitalist countries are thriving, while many socialist countries have collapsed during the past quarter-century. Nonetheless, capitalism is revealing its flaws both in the developed world (e.g. recent financial crises) and in rapidly developing countries (e.g. ecological damage), leading to social unrest that is making Marx's prediction relevant once more. Considering this situation from a broader historical perspective suggests that new social groups often evolve to fill niches left open by more traditional groups and can support the evolution of new social systems during the establishment of new industries, technologies, and institutions. Thus, they play a crucial role in initiating and guiding fundamental institutional change. Although capitalism has been surprisingly long-lived by historical standards for such systems, new systems may be evolving to push it aside. China's rapid socioeconomic changes in recent decades provide an opportunity to watch new social groups emerge and begin to play an important role in changing social institutions. The institutional diversity created and sustained by these groups may be important for humanity's long-term survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's economic and political reforms since 1978 represent one of the biggest institutional changes in the last century. Because most research has focused on the economics of institutional change rather than the evolution of political institutions, a theoretical framework to explain China's rapid economic development is lacking. To understand the successes and failures of China's institutional change, we reviewed China's innovative political and economic practices during the past 30 years. We found that the country's political and economic institutions combine to form a dynamic equilibrium that can explain the impressive economic results. China's leaders dream of new institutions that will improve upon traditional Western capitalism, based on a combination of central planning with traditional capitalist approaches that increase the system's flexibility. If China's leaders can combine this approach with decreased social costs compared with previous socioeconomic systems, this will represent a new era and a model that other nations can follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graphical abstract Highlights • The net ecosystem services value can reveal the real benefits of an ecosystem. • The net ecosystem services value provides superior support for land use policy. • The net value is more practical than the payment for ecosystem services. Abstract Environmental protection can maintain ecosystem health, improve the provision of ecosystem services, and increase human welfare. However, traditional calculations of the value of ecosystem services (VES) exclude their cost, thereby undermining plans to achieve a combination of environmental protection with sustainable socioeconomic development. To understand the difference between VES and the net value after accounting for costs (NES), we evaluated the evolution of the main ecosystem services in China. When costs are accounted for (i.e., when they are subtracted from VES), NES averaged 10.0 × 103 RMB·ha−1·yr−1 for China as a whole (35.1% of VES), with values of 39.0 × 103, −0.7 × 103, 27.7 × 103, and 13.0 × 103 RMB·ha−1·yr−1 for wetland, grassland, farmland, and forest ecosystems, respectively. These values represent decreases of 36.4, 114.9, 52.7, and 70.6% from the corresponding VES values. To achieve sustainable development and ecological restoration, China's government must base decisions on NES, not VES, to ensure that they account for the associated costs. Applying the present results in China and elsewhere in the world should increase the net benefits of ecological restoration while still permitting socioeconomic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protection of the ecological environment is an effective strategy for maintaining ecosystem health, improving provision of ecosystem services, and increasing human well-being. However, traditional calculations of the value of ecosystem services (VES) provide weak guidance because they ignore the costs of these services, leading to economically inefficient strategies. To understand the difference between VES and the net ecosystem services value (NES, after subtracting costs from VES) and to improve evaluations of ecosystem services, we estimated NES for mainland China (including farmland, grassland, forest, and wetland). NES totaled 10.0×103 RMB ha−1 yr−1 in 2014, which is only 35.1% of the corresponding VES. Grassland NES was-0.7×103 RMB ha−1 yr−1, in contrast with a positive grassland VES. NES of farmland, grassland, forest, and wetland in 2014 totaled 7.2×1012 RMB, accounting for 27.0% of China’s GNP. Recent Chinese planning based on VES emphasizes forest conservation and ignores the conservation of other important ecosystems, such as grassland, leading to a continuing loss of China’s natural capital. Due to regional differences in economic conditions, resource endowments, and geographical characteristics, VES and NES differ among regions. To maximize the ecological benefits from conservation, it is necessary to account for these differences by comparing strategies based on NES, thereby choosing projects that maximize both economic and ecological benefits. To maintain the ecological balance, ecological restoration and socioeconomic activities should account for the costs of providing ecosystem services. This is essential to minimize the costs and maximize the benefits of projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the strategies used by the government of China in combating desertification in the arid region. Topics discussed include factors which results in the formations of desertification such as climate change and human activities; ecological restoration programs in arid and semiarid regions; and promotion of no-till cultivation to protect the soil and decrease water consumption.

People who live in ecologically fragile environments face both poverty and environmental degradation, which reinforce each other and create a 'poverty trap.' Traditional ecological restoration projects focus only on ecological measures, and thus ignore the livelihoods of local residents. Those projects therefore fail to solve the poverty trap. In addition, project subsidies to residents typically end when the projects end, thus forcing residents to return to their old way of life and reversing the gains from the projects. To break this cycle, we performed a study in China's Yanan City, in Shaanxi Province, to promote a new 'green purchase' method for implementing sustainable economic activities that bring residents ongoing earnings without harming the environment. This method involves the construction of terraced fields, establishment of fruit tree orchards, implementation of grazing restrictions, and ecological migration. We found that the method was ecologically effective, as it increased Yanan's vegetation cover by 0.89% annually since 1999, which is twice the rate for Shaanxi Province. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rather than attempting to balance the environment with the economy (i.e., a zero-sum game), a theoretically better long-term approach would be to achieve harmonious development in which both the environment and the economy benefit. To provide insights into this suggestion, we analyzed the relationships between environmental quality and economic development in China through a threshold regression model based on panel data from 292 cities from 2007 to 2018. We found that the relationship between environmental quality and economic development represented a negative interaction before or after the relationship passed through a zone of temporary balance, but that attaining a high urbanization level (in this case study, 81.0%) could improve the efficiency and capital utilization rate of environmental governance and change the impact from negative to positive, thereby achieving harmonious development rather than a zero-sum game. The government should therefore take measures to increase urbanization so as to achieve more harmonious development of the environment and economy (i.e., a win–win situation). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land degradation is a global environmental problem that jeopardizes human safety and socioeconomic development. To alleviate severe soil erosion and desertification due to deforestation and overgrazing, China has implemented historically unprecedented large-scale afforestation. However, few studies have accounted for the resulting imbalance between water supply (primarily precipitation) and water consumption (evapotranspiration), which will affect ecosystem health and socioeconomic development. We compared the water balance results between restoration by means of afforestation and restoration using the potential natural vegetation to guide future ecological restoration planning and environmental policy development. Based on estimates of water consumption from seven evapotranspiration models, we discuss the consequences for water security using data obtained since 1952 under China's large-scale afforestation program. The models estimated that afforestation will increase water consumption by 559–2354 m 3 /ha annually compared with natural vegetation. Although afforestation is a potentially important approach for environmental restoration, China's current policy has not been tailored to local precipitation conditions, and will have therefore exacerbated water shortages and decrease the ability to achieve environmental policy goals. Our analysis shows how, both in China and around the world, future ecological restoration planning must account for the water balance to ensure effective and sustainable environmental restoration policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutional change is a response to socioeconomic pressures caused by resource scarcity, population growth, cultural change, and economic inefficiency. Historical evidence shows that the unequitable resource redistribution among groups caused by institutional change can indirectly reduce income, particularly when it leads to civil conflicts. A more equitable and effective approach to institutional change would seek win–win solutions. To examine this possibility, I review historical examples of institutional change in China to show how gradual institutional change that lets all stakeholders share the economic benefits is the most successful path. Therefore, innovation to replace or modify old institutions and equitably increase economic growth will be a key approach. This win–win approach requires persuasion, compromise, demonstration projects, competition, and embracing institutional diversity. Increased economic benefits come from economic innovation and encouragement of stakeholders to participate in institutional change, but require nurturing of new social groups that will drive the change process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversity sustains an ecosystem when the environment changes, and a diversity of human institutions improves the ability of cultures to adapt to change and survive. Because it is not always clear which of several potential policies will be the optimal solution for a given situation, preserving a mix of policies often performs better than insisting on a single policy. The survival of Chinese civilization for millennia is a consequence of how this huge, economically vibrant nation perceives itself and its global role. To understand the dynamics of institutional diversity and their consequences during China’s long history, it’s helpful to understand the meaning of the Chinese lóng (dragon) symbol and its impacts on China’s socioeconomic development. In contrast with evil western dragons, lóng symbolize harmony through the ability to incorporate a range of ideas, resulting in increased institutional diversity. This diversity has helped Chinese civilization survive many historical crises, and is now sustaining China’s socioeconomic development by promoting a robust, resilient, adaptable, and harmonious system that encourages culture and trade. The acceptance and conservation of institutional diversity will undoubtedly continue to sustain China by encouraging peaceful exchanges among cultures that reduce conflict and by teaching new ways to handle evolving situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

States are autonomous political units that unite many communities within their territory, and whose centralized government has the power to collect taxes, draft citizens for work or war, and decree and enforce laws. States attempt to solve the problem of allocating scarce resources because the growth in human needs due to long-term, continuous population increases has always exceeded growth in the environmental carrying capacity. In these self-governed independent territories, people, communities, corporations, and public wealth are protected by complex combinations of individual and collective property rights. However, this stage of social institutional evolution may be forced to change as human populations decline (because many women now reject the option of having children) while improved science, technology, and social institutions solve or mitigate the problem of resource scarcity. In response, the political ecology of states will need to evolve to meet new challenges and develop new institutions that can promote environmentally sustainable social development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An intriguing feature of China's rapid socioeconomic development during the past 30 years is the new path it appears to represent for other developing countries. Unfortunately, the risks associated with China's model are severe; they include a growing gap between the rich and poor caused by an unbalanced supply of social welfare, environmental degradation caused by unsustainable development, growing risks to food security caused by farmland degradation, damage to China's international reputation, and growing social turbulence as a result of runaway corruption. These problems will jeopardize China's achievements if the current path continues to be pursued without intervention by the central government to solve these problems. To provide insights into the damage being caused by China's socioeconomic development model, we provide examples of problems that have arisen during the current period of reform and that must be avoided by other developing countries that hope to emulate China's rapid development without incurring the same costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many societies face an income gap between rich regions with access to advanced technology and regions that are rich in natural resources but poorer in technology. This 'resource curse' can lead to a Kuznets trap, in which economic inequalities between the rich and the poor increase during the process of socioeconomic development. This can also lead to depletion of natural resources, environmental degradation, social instability, and declining socioeconomic development. These problems will jeopardize China's achievements if the current path continues to be pursued without intervention by the government to solve the problems. To mitigate the socioeconomic development gap between western and eastern China, the government implemented its Western Development Program in 2000. However, recent data suggest that this program has instead worsened the resource curse. Because each region has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, China must escape the resource curse by accounting for this difference; in western China, this can be done by improving education, promoting high-tech industry, adjusting its economic strategy to balance regional development, and seeking more sustainable approaches to socioeconomic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has among the highest biodiversities in the world, but faces extreme biodiversity losses due to the country's huge population and its recent explosive socioeconomic development. Despite huge efforts and investments by the government and Chinese society to conserve biodiversity, especially in recent decades, biodiversity losses may not have been reversed, and may even have been exacerbated by unintended consequences resulting from these projects. China's centralized approach to biodiversity conservation, with limited local participation, creates an inflexible and inefficient approach because of conflicts between local communities and national administrators over the benefits. Although community-based conservation may be an imperfect approach, it is an essential component of a successful future national conservation plan. Biodiversity conservation should be considered from the perspective of systems engineering and a governance structure that combines centralization with community-level conservation. In this paper, we describe China's complex challenge: how to manage interactions between humans and nature to find win-win solutions that can ensure long-term biodiversity conservation without sacrificing human concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global environmental problems have significant natural and socioeconomic consequences. However, the consequences are often evaluated independently by ecologists and social scientists. In an effort to integrate the consequences of the two types of problem during ecological restoration and thereby improve future development of environmental policy, we used regression analysis and remote sensing to calculate the relative contributions of human activities, climate change, and socioeconomic development to land use and cover change during China’s huge investments in ecological restoration since the 1980s. We performed this analysis both for China as a whole, and for eight regions with distinctive ecological and social characteristics. We found that China’s fast socioeconomic development and decreasing rural population were dominant factors in ecological restoration, whereas direct human intervention was a paradoxical factor that did not always lead to recovery. However, the changes in vegetation cover and the dominant causal factors differed among the regions of China as a result of differences in local conditions. Because of the complexity of ecosystem restoration, a region-specific strategy based on integrating ecological and socioeconomic factors should be developed. In particular, we urge caution when considering single, monolithic approaches (such as the afforestation that is currently the main approach) because these approaches ignore the local limits imposed by ecological factors such as climate and soils and human factors such as socioeconomic characteristics; such approaches can be dangerous if they neglect key social or natural factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China leads the world in afforestation, and is one of the few countries whose forested area is increasing. However, this massive 'greening' effort has been less effective than expected; afforestation has sometimes produced unintended environmental, ecological, and socioeconomic consequences, and has failed to achieve the desired ecological benefits. Where afforestation has succeeded, the approach was tailored to local environmental conditions. Using the right plant species or species composition for the site and considering alternatives such as grassland restoration have been important success factors. To expand this success, government policy should shift from a forest-based approach to a results-based approach. In addition, long-term monitoring must be implemented to provide the data needed to develop a cost-effective, scientifically informed restoration policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since, 1978, China has pursued some of the world's most ambitious conservation programs, including the Three Norths Shelter Forest System Project, Grain for Green Project, and the Natural Forest Conservation Program. After 30 years of experience with these programs, researchers have found that improving agricultural technology and providing appropriate payment for ecosystem service (PES) to farmers displaced by these programs can improve both the environment and society while avoiding the malignant cycle in which poverty leads to environmental destruction, which then deepens poverty. However, flaws in the implementation of these programs mean that it remains necessary to watch for damage to the environment and society caused by inappropriate technology and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Afforestation is a primary tool for controlling desertification and soil erosion in China. Large-scale afforestation, however, has complex and poorly understood consequences for the structure and composition of future ecosystems. Here, we discuss the potential links between China''s historical large-scale afforestation practices and the program''s effects on environmental restoration in arid and semi-arid regions in northern China based on a review of data from published papers, and offer recommendations to overcome the shortcomings of current environmental policy. Although afforestation is potentially an important approach for environmental restoration, current Chinese policy has not been tailored to local environmental conditions, leading to the use of inappropriate species and an overemphasis on tree and shrub planting, thereby compromising the ability to achieve environmental policy goals. China''s huge investment to increase forest cover seems likely to exacerbate environmental degradation in environmentally fragile areas because it has ignored climate, pedological, hydrological, and landscape factors that would make a site unsuitable for afforestation. This has, in many cases, led to the deterioration of soil ecosystems and decreased vegetation cover, and has exacerbated water shortages. Large-scale and long-term research is urgently needed to provide information that supports a more effective and flexible environmental restoration policy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Conservation of the ecological environment presents scientists with a challenging dilemma because the strategy often leads to negative impacts on impoverished people in the area affected by the project. To consider this problem, we investigated the implications of China's national and regional policies related to the Natural Forest Conservation Program (NFCP) for poverty in the dryland regions of northern Shaanxi Province. We found that 34.9, 47.0, and 59.8% of farmers, livestock grazers, and forest workers respectively, felt that their livelihoods had been adversely affected by the NFCP due to the ban on logging and grazing imposed by this program, and they perceived additional economic losses because they were not adequately compensated for their economic losses under the program. These perceptions are supported by economic data. In addition, our results showed that the poorer the survey respondent, the greater the likelihood they believed that they had suffered from the implementation of the NFCP. Although Chinese citizens have become more favorable towards environmental conservation efforts, the poorest citizens still need considerable help to make it possible for them to participate in both economic development and environmental restoration. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Road construction is an important cause of environmental degradation, particularly in mountainous regions. However, re-establishing vegetation cover at the construction site can mitigate these problems, particularly on steep roadside slopes. In the present study, we developed two new planting techniques to increase vegetation cover on these slopes, in which planters fill the holes in air bricks (i.e., bricks with large holes that pass through the full depth of the brick) with soil, then plant grass or herbaceous species in the soil. Two variants of this technique (one in which the air bricks form a stairstep pattern, and another in which they form a smooth slope) were tested in an area with a warm climate near Shennongjia (Hubei Province) between 2006 and 2008. The new planting techniques promoted root growth, the development of a continuous vegetation cover, and the production of merchantable seeds compared with the conventional planting technique. This suggests that the air brick technique is more suitable for the study area, where the natural soils are thin, and may prove suitable for similar areas elsewhere in the world. The provisional results, based on 2 years of research, suggest that the new techniques represent a potentially valuable alternative for vegetation restoration, landscape conservation, and road maintenance/management in mountainous zones during and after highway construction. The techniques have strong potential for use in other areas. In addition, they provide a good example of using ecological engineering to increase vegetation cover on steep roadside slopes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Historical statistics suggest that China''s “one child” family-planning policy is exacerbating the risk of extinction for smaller ethnic groups. To mitigate the adverse consequences of this policy, the Chinese government must begin working now to understand and account for these risks and to offer a pragmatic policy for these groups based on sustainable birth rates. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Decreasing population levels due to declining birth rates are becoming a potentially serious social problem in developed and rapidly developing countries. China urgently needed to reduce birth rates so that its population would decline to a sustainable level, and the family planning policy designed to achieve this goal has largely succeeded. However, continuing to pursue this policy is leading to serious, unanticipated problems such as a shift in the country's population distribution towards the elderly and increasing difficulty supporting that elderly population. Social and political changes that promoted low birth rates and the lack of effective policies to encourage higher birth rates suggest that mitigating the consequences of the predicted population decline will depend on a revised approach based on achieving sustainable birth rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1. China's Grain for Green Project is a rapid landscape-scale shift in ground cover and land use with significant implications for biodiversity. From 1998 to 2005, we carried out field studies to examine the landscape-level impacts of this project, and to provide a practical example of the successes and failures of a large-scale attempt to restore a vulnerable environment. 2. In a northern part of China's Shaanxi Province, our results indicated that the total vegetation cover in areas covered by this project increased from 29·7% in 1998 to 42·2% in 2005. However, we also found evidence that large-scale afforestation in this vulnerable arid and semi-arid region could increase the severity of water shortages, decrease vegetation cover in afforestation plots, and adversely affect the number of species present. The exclusion of livestock from overgrazed areas and the elimination of cultivation in marginal areas had the biggest effects on the restoration of vegetation cover, whereas tree planting had a strong negative effect in vulnerable areas. 3. Synthesis and applications. In practical terms, the destruction of natural vegetation cover during afforestation should be avoided, as this makes the soil surface more vulnerable to erosion and reduces species diversity. Managers should reduce the intensity of farming and grazing on fragile land rather than relying on afforestation as the primary tool for ecological restoration in arid and semi-arid areas. Afforestation remains a valuable tool but should be limited to the planting of native or other species that will not exacerbate soil water shortages such as stable communities of natural desert steppe, maximum water-use efficiency dwarf shrubs, and possibly even lichen species in more severely degraded environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most economists and policy-makers would now agree that economic growth – in the sense of rising per capita incomes or expenditures – reduces poverty in the developing world. However, it is also true that per capita data does not adequately account for individuals who have fallen into the poverty trap, as in China: a widening gap is developing between the rich and the poor due to a disparity in income and employment opportunities, among other factors, between rural and urban residents, and this gap is not reflected in mean (per capita) parameters. The present paper illustrates how the situation in China during the current period of reform should not be forgotten when other developing countries consider the pros and cons of China's rapid development. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: There are many factors have contributed to China''s environmental crisis and are hindering environmental recovery campaigns. In particular, the implementation of government policy has played a strong role, both because of a government''s natural slowness to change and because of structural impediments. Competition for a share of the huge investments that are being made to support environmental protection among various governmental departments and with local governments has also slowed progress. The conflicting socioeconomic policies that can result from this competition have undermined the large investments in environmental programs by failing to consider the environmental consequences of the conflicts, leading to inappropriate actions and compromising the ability to achieve environmental restoration goals. To improve governance and the ability to meet environmental goals, governments at all levels must understand the problem created by the competition that leads to weak coordination of efforts and must formulate revised policies that encourage sustainability by balancing economic growth with a careful consideration of the need for all groups, whether governmental or private sector, to benefit from these policies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Large-scale afforestation is a primary tool for combatting desertification and global warming. However, the consequences for future ecosystems are complex and poorly understood. To judge the payback from afforestation in arid regions, we assessed the effects of the Three-North Shelter Forest Program, which is the world's largest ecological restoration program, in predominantly semi-arid to arid regions in China. Our analysis revealed a net loss of 230.8 × 109 RMB annually for afforestation, suggesting that tree planting is a poor choice in much of northern China. However, establishment of fruit tree plantations and protecting vegetation to allow natural recovery produced large annual benefits (235.5 × 109 RMB and 447.43 × 109 RMB, respectively) due to having the highest product value and lowest restoration cost, respectively. Because the net benefits were negative for artificial afforestation, and some net benefits were negative for some restoration programs in some regions, it is essential to change the proportions of the different restoration methods both to improve the restoration success and ensure the survival of the residents in areas affected by the program. • Our more comprehensive form of cost–benefit analysis reveals net benefits. • We applied the method to China's Three North Shelter Forest Program. • Forest protection to allow natural recovery gave high net benefits due to low cost. • Fruit tree plantations provided high net benefits due to income from fruit sales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forests generate a wide range of ecosystem services that support human well-being and socioeconomic development. However, traditional calculations of the value of these services generally failed to account for their costs. To understand the difference between the value (VES) and the net value (NES) of forest ecosystem services, we used government statistics and data from published papers about the values and costs of these services to calculate the NES of China's forest ecosystems. After accounting for the opportunity costs (water consumption and land rent), the investments in conservation and restoration of forests, and the cost of management to prevent natural disasters, China's forest NES averaged 13.3 × 103 RMB ha−1 year−1, which is only 30.1% of the average VES of 44.2 × 103 RMB ha−1 year−1 calculated using the traditional approach. We also found NES was negative in parts of eastern China because of the region's excessive investments in forests. Accounting for the costs to determine the true (net) value of ecosystem services suggests that this region should reconsider the size and nature of its investments to optimize its land use. Our findings provide a reference for the management of other ecosystems in the world where VES calculations may ignore significant costs of ecological restoration and conservation, resulting in inappropriate investments in ecosystems and improper planning of land use. The methods we describe can help restoration managers identify and solve these problems. • The net ecosystem services value can reveal the real benefits of an ecosystem. • The net value provides stronger support for decision-making for ecological conservation. • The net value is more practical than the payment for ecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization is a dominant component of social and economic development around the world, but this process creates tremendous pressure on the ecological environment. How to achieve coordination between urbanization and conservation of this environment has become a key issue, especially in developing countries. It is necessary to identify the driving factors that affect this coordination. To identify these factors, we chose 290 Chinese prefecture-level cities to analyze the driving factors behind urbanization using spatial regression analysis, and explored the spatial differences among regions in these factors. Our results show that industrial upgrading and technological progress were the main factors that promoted coordinated development, with industrialization having positive effects under government management, but with differences among regions in how the driving forces affected coordinated development. Using technological progress to promote industrial upgrading, creating new employment to absorb surplus rural labor, and providing workers with skills training so they can take advantage of new jobs can promote win–win solutions that coordinate urbanization with conservation of the ecological environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Flash floods from the Tibetan Plateau threaten many dryland communities. • Rethinking floods as resources can promote sustainable development in these drylands. • Involving all stakeholders in the project was essential to the project's success. The uneven spatial and temporal distributions of water resources have made regional scarcities of water resources an increasingly prominent problem around the world. This problem seriously affects food security, desertification, land degradation, and sustainable socio-economic development. Simultaneously, flood disasters caused by excess water resources cause high human and economic losses. Therefore, how to more effectively use the available water resources (e.g., to divert water from regions with an excess to regions with a deficit) is a major issue for the world to solve. For example, the Tibetan plateau generates 392.4 × 109 m3 of freshwater annually in the form of floods in downstream regions below the plateau, greatly harming people in the lower reaches of the many large Asian rivers that originate on the plateau. However, many rivers have been managed to capture billions of m3 of floodwater in their reservoirs. If we could use even half of this stored floodwater for irrigation, this would support cultivation and vegetation restoration in 31.1 × 106 ha surrounding these rivers, greatly increasing food security and improving the regional ecological environment through improved vegetation cover. However, the plateau's water distribution shows obvious regional heterogeneity and seasonal variation that must be accounted for. Rational utilization of the plateau's water resources could potentially improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people, but serious risks must be avoided to achieve this goal. By analyzing the benefits and risks of utilizing the plateau's water resources, we provide guidance for future utilization of this water and suggest future research directions. The countries around the plateau and researchers from around the world should form a multidisciplinary international organization to comprehensively examine the proposals for floodwater use and ensure safe utilization of this water. It is essential to establish a transnational water resource management organization to balance the interests of the different regions and countries that depend on Tibetan Plateau water to reduce the risk of political conflict and of adverse environmental consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization represents an intriguing new way to increase global prosperity. However, it represents a dramatic contrast to events in previous centuries, both in the West and in China, when most unions resulted from warfare and conquest rather than from peaceful negotiations. This can be seen in the increase in military conflict and decrease in political stability in many parts of the world in recent years. Therefore, achieving a union of nations through economic methods may reduce the risk of military conflict if nations can find ways to turn conflicts into a mixture of national cooperation and healthy competition ("coopetition"), leading to the evolution of a new world political order. Unlike previous efforts to create peaceful unions, such as the Global League of Nations, the new union of nations may succeed because it emphasizes the political and economic self-interest of each member state, thereby offering the possibility of win–win solutions. Through this process, conflict can become cooperation because the union of political powers with different ideologies under a unified regime will provide a dispute resolution mechanism and mitigate the risk of conflict. To achieve that goal, it will be necessary to develop a new way of thinking that emphasizes peaceful cooperation and competition rather than warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disorder seems inevitable when a social system changes. The Soviet Union's collapse provided a recent example, and China is now providing a new example. During China's transformation from a communist society with a centrally planned economy to a market-based socialist society, "ethical decline" has become an increasingly serious issue, and one that has high social and economic costs. Historical experience from many cultures shows that this ethical decline is not inherent to Chinese culture. Chinese ethics are being compromised by partnerships between government officials and businessmen who benefit at the expense of society because of a lack of monitoring of such relationships during China's radical institutional change. This growing problem poses serious risks to China's social stability and economic development. To solve the problem, it will be necessary to establish a sound legal framework and more effective monitoring and enforcement, rather than hoping for spontaneous evolution of stronger individual ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's goal is to develop some of the top universities in the world, but there is still a big gap in university quality compared with developed countries. The current command and control system used by the national government limits university autonomy and has created many problems, including a lack of scientific innovation, a widening poverty gap in terms of access to higher education, and a mismatch between supply and demand in the labor market. To solve these problems, China's higher education system must change to permit more autonomy and a stronger focus on the job market; to pay university professors a fair wage; to provide more freedom to the administration of universities and research institutes; and to promote participation by professors in the administration of schools. It will also be important to place less emphasis on awards and titles, and focus instead on letting the best research speak for itself. • Chinese university education is still guided primarily by the government. • This command and control system has limited the development of university education. • Universities should compete in the market, guided by government control. • Students should be encouraged to become more innovative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sustainability of land conversion to urban use is an important factor that promotes sustainable urbanization. However, China's local governments have relied too much on the land finance model for urbanization, which has led to disordered growth of urban land, ultimately posing a threat to ecosystem security and socioeconomic development. Effectively evaluating the factors that influence the growth of urban land is critical to improving the sustainability of urban land use. In this study, we explored the factors that affect the growth in the area of urban land using spatial analysis models based on panel data for Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2007 to 2019. We found that fiscal decentralization, infrastructure, industrialization, and industrial upgrading were the main factors responsible for the growth of urban land, but that their degrees of influence differed between regions. Our findings identify the necessity for local governments to design urban land-use policies and perform strategic planning for urban land use to improve sustainability based on the main factors that influenced the growth of urban land in each region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutions are effective means by which human societies resolve conflicts over the use of scarce resources and maintain social stability. Institutions evolve as human knowledge improves or as the situation changes. To find suitable principles to guide institutional evolution, we reviewed examples of historical institutional evolution in China to seek guidance for the evolution of other modern institutions. We found that gradualism, win-win paths, stability, neutrality, and cultural diversity are key principles for successful institutional evolution. However, fear of the uncertainty associated with institutional change and changing external conditions will affect the results of institutional change. Designers of new or revised institutions should use publicity and education, combined with gradualism (pilot tests), and measures to ensure neutrality and political stability, to increase acceptance of institutional evolution. In both politics and economics, institutional change can be a long evolutionary process, and it's necessary to balance the changes in political institutions with economic development throughout the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite fears of global overpopulation, population declines are becoming a significant demographic problem in developed and rapidly developing countries. If we have no effective measures to solve the problem, the world’s population will continue to age, and some small ethnic groups will face a risk of extinction. The human race’s social and genetic diversity therefore face significant challenges. The failure to raise birth rates in developed regions suggests that preventing adverse consequences from the population decline will not depend on our good intentions or on new technology, but rather on recognition of the problems resulting from an evolved institution based on low birth rates. Changing this institution will require us to enhance the social status of women, but will also require practical recognition of their unique needs in the context of childbearing and raising children. However, this innovation represents a huge challenge to overcome because of human resistance to change of existing institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose. To analyze the clinical significance of the sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) score in the diagnosis, treatment, and prognostic assessment of sepsis. Methods. 140 patients with sepsis from January 2020 to January 2021 were selected as the observation group, and 40 healthy people were selected as the control group. The observation group was divided into mild group, severe group, and septic shock group by single blind grouping according to the condition of the disease, and they were also divided into survival group and death group according to the prognosis. Collect the fasting venous blood of the subjects in each group in the morning, compare the levels of total bilirubin (TBIL), blood creatinine (CR), and platelet count (PLT) in each group, and record and compare the patients' respiratory system oxygen partial pressure/inhaled oxygen concentration (po2/fio2), acute physiology and chronic health scoring system II (APACHE II), sequential organ failure assessment (sofa) score, q-SOFA score, and △SOFA score; Pearson analysis was used to analyze the correlation between SOFA score and other indicators; multivariate logistic regression was used to analyze the prognostic risk factors of patients with sepsis; receiver-operating characteristic curve (ROC) was used to analyze the value of SOFA score alone and in combination in the diagnosis, condition, and prognosis of sepsis. Results. There were significant differences in Apache II score, SOFA score, q-SOFA score map, po2/fio2, PLT, GCS, TBIL, and serum creatinine (SCR) between the control group and the observation group (P < 0.05). There were significant differences in Apache II score, SOFA score, q-SOFA score, mean arterial pressure (map) po2/fio2, PLT, Glasgow Coma Score (GCS), TBIL, SCR, and △SOFA score among patients in mild, severe, and septic shock groups (P < 0.05). There were significant differences in age, Apache II score, SOFA score, q-SOFA score, map, po2/fio2, PLT, GCS, TBIL, SCR, and △SOFA score between survival group and death group (P < 0.05). SOFA score and q-SOFA score were significantly positively correlated with TBIL and SCR and significantly negatively correlated with po2/fio2 and PLT; △SOFA score was significantly negatively correlated with TBIL and SCR and significantly positively correlated with map, po2/fio2, PLT, and GCS. Apache II score, SOFA score, and q-SOFA score were independent risk factors for sepsis patients, and △SOFA score, po2/fio2, and GCS score were protective factors (P < 0.05). ROC curve analysis showed that the AUC of sepsis combined with SOFA score and q-SOFA score was 0.880; the AUC of sepsis assessed by SOFA score, q-SOFA score, and △SOFA score was 0.929; the AUC of sepsis prognosis assessed by SOFA score, q-SOFA score, and △SOFA score was 0.900. Conclusion. SOFA score, q-SOFA score, and △SOFA score were abnormally expressed in patients with sepsis and were risk factors for the severity of the patient's condition and prognosis. The SOFA score, q-SOFA score, and △SOFA score were risk factors for the severity and prognosis of patients with sepsis and had some value in diagnosing sepsis and assessing the condition and prognosis, of which the combined value of the three was higher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is undergoing rapid urbanization accompanied by rapid urban development and migration of rural populations to the cities. Because local governments are selling land to compensate for an unbalanced tax system that provides them with insufficient budgets, urban expansion is booming around the country. However, this form of land finance has grown out of control, in some cases producing uninhabited “ghost towns”, without any feedback from institutions that would limit the problem. Simultaneously, social problems have arisen from a failure to compensate the land's former residents for loss of their land and future livelihood, thereby jeopardizing China's social stability. This under-recognized contradiction created by urbanization is endangering China's environment and its socioeconomic development, and will endanger other developing countries seeking to emulate China's urbanization model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the huge demand for food created by China's large population and the high cost of transporting food across such a large nation, a food security strategy based on local self-sufficiency seems vital. To encourage agricultural production, agricultural subsidies have therefore been implemented since 1997. Although subsidies to support food production in China arose from the desire to combat poverty and hunger, they may have instead led to adverse health impacts, food insecurity, and environmental degradation because the complexity of socioeconomic systems prevented governments from fully understanding the relationships among the many factors in such systems. China therefore faces enormous challenges before it can attain sustainable food production at levels high enough to end hunger, without undesirable consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Roads are a prominent feature of many landscapes, and high road densities create correspondingly high ecological impacts by altering landscape patterns, interrupting ecological flows, increasing erosion, fragmenting habitat, and facilitating the spread of invasive species. Here, we describe the construction of “near-natural greenways” that produce environmentally and socially harmonious road systems that meet the needs of both the environment and the socioeconomic development in China and that satisfy environmental, ecological, educational, traffic safety, economic, and sustainable developmental goals. In the last decade, China has embarked upon the implementation of a network of near-natural greenways with the vision of linking economic development with nature conservation by means of improved rehabilitation of existing road systems and improved construction of new roads. Ecological science, and especially landscape ecology, will play an important role in the planning and implementation of future near-natural greenways in China and around the world. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Decreasing population levels due to declining birth rates are becoming a potentially serious social problem in developed and rapidly developing countries. China urgently needed to reduce birth rates so that its population would decline to a sustainable level, and the family planning policy designed to achieve this goal has largely succeeded. However, continuing to pursue this policy is leading to serious, unanticipated problems such as a shift in the country's population distribution towards the elderly and increasing difficulty supporting that elderly population. Social and political changes that promoted low birth rates and the lack of effective policies to encourage higher birth rates suggest that mitigating the consequences of the predicted population decline will depend on a revised approach based on achieving sustainable birth rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Grain for Green Program (GGP) that the Chinese government has implemented, the world's largest ecological restoration plan, has an important component based on payments for ecosystem services. However, the program's net benefits (which include compentation payments) remain unclear. To solve this problem, we proposed an improved cost–benefit analysis method that reveals the specific relationship between the benefits of each type of restoration and the multiple costs that must be incurred to generate those benefits. The results showed that the benefits and net benefits of GGP were 1749.2 × 109 RMB and 637.2 × 109 RMB, respectively in 2017. These were equivalent to total and net benefits that averaged 60.17 × 103 RMB·ha−1·yr−1 and 21.92 × 103 RMB·ha−1·yr−1, respectively, across the four methods. Afforestation of degraded land had the biggest total cost (509.1 × 109 RMB·yr−1), whereas establishing fruit tree plantations produced the highest net benefit (244.2 × 109 RMB·yr−1), but the best cost–benefit ratio was obtained by natural forest conservation (366.8%). To improve the net benefits of GGP while balancing the relationship between environmental protection and economic development, the GGP must be adapted so that managers plan program implementation based on net benefits; to do so, planners should choose the method for each site that maximizes the program's benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Land degradation results from the interactions among multiple climate and human factors. Solving the problem requires a holistic strategy that deals with all significant factors simultaneously. However, it is difficult to solve such problems because few researchers have studied the simultaneous effects of these interactions, making it difficult to develop a truly holistic strategy. To help land managers find such a strategy, we have proposed and tested a new approach for ecological restoration in which we calculated the simultaneous contributions of multiple factors during vegetation cover change in Yan'an City, Shaanxi Province, China, from 2000 to 2016. After implementing the new approach, the vegetation cover increased by 35.7% during the study period, which is 2.3 times the rate in the rest of Shaanxi Province, where only the national Grain for Green program was implemented. The new approach accounted for 74.0% of the increased vegetation cover in the first year, and comparable values in the second and third years. Our results provide important information to guide sustainable development in China, and our approach can be adapted for use in other nations that are facing similar problems. Graphical abstract Image 1 Highlights • Ecological restoration must account for climate and human factors simultaneously. • Restoration through socioeconomic development will be sustainable in the long term. • Alleviating poverty significantly improves the effects of ecological restoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graphical abstract Highlights • Fe 3 O 4 @PS-TMG was synthesized by immobilizing TMG onto the shell of nanohybrids. • The loading of TMG as well as surface property of catalyst can be well regulated. • The MPIC can stabilize soybean oil-in-methanol Pickering emulsion. • The MPIC exhibited higher catalytic activity for transesterification. Abstract A novel magnetic Pickering interfacial catalyst (MPIC) was developed and used for highly effective and clean production of biodiesel. The catalyst was synthesized by immobilization of 1,1,3,3-tetramethylguanidine (TMG) onto the shell of Fe 3 O 4 @Chloromethyl PS nanohybrids. The resultant Fe 3 O 4 @PS-TMG was measured by transmission electron microscope (TEM), dynamic lighting scattering (DLS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), elemental analysis (EA), thermogravimetric analysis (TG), contact angles (CA). The results showed that surface property and TMG loading of catalyst can be finely regulated via adjusting the feeding of TMG. Fe 3 O 4 @PS-TMG with amphiphilic surface can stabilize soybean oil-in-methanol Pickering emulsion, which would offer large interfacial area and surface enrichment of reactants, leading to a significant enhancement of such liquid-liquid (L-L) biphasic reaction with high mass transfer resistance. Furthermore, the MPIC can be facile separated from the mixture of reaction by magnet, and showed excellent stability over 5 recycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water scarcity is a global environmental problem that jeopardizes human safety and socioeconomic development. Since 1952, China has implemented a large-scale tree-planting program in the country's arid regions to combat desertification. However, there is a serious risk this program will exacerbate water shortages and lower the groundwater table: the trees selected for this program were not chosen based on local environmental constraints, and their evapotranspiration exceeds the regional precipitation. However, no data on the afforestation's effects on the groundwater table is available. This is problematic because any loss of groundwater will severely constrain socioeconomic development in China's arid and semiarid regions, which already face severe water shortages. The economic concept of a groundwater opportunity cost could be used to guide socioeconomic activities to improve the sustainability of groundwater use and mitigate the potential problems caused by the Chinese afforestation program. In this paper, seven evapotranspiration models were used to provide the first estimate of the opportunity cost created by afforestation's adverse effects on the groundwater resource. The results showed that the groundwater table declined yearly throughout the study area, with mean water opportunity costs in 2011 ranging from 0.04 × 10 9 RMB to 11.1 × 10 9 RMB under nine provinces in arid and semiarid China. This study provides the first solid evidence that afforestation in arid and semiarid northern China will exacerbate the groundwater decline while creating enormous opportunity costs. Thus, the afforestation program must be urgently reassessed and the water-use efficiency of vegetation must be considered when planning future ecological restoration both to make the restoration more cost-effective and to protect the ecosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecological services were initially used to quantify the benefits used in valuation of environmental protection, as they helped stakeholders to understand the benefits that ecosystems bring to people. As a result, they increased support for ecological engineering, including ecosystem restoration. However, by failing to account for costs, and particularly for indirect costs such as the tradeoffs among ecosystem services under different land uses, the analyses were incomplete and often provided poor support for policy development and land management to promote environmental conservation. In this paper, we provide a framework for assessing the net value of the benefits provided by ecosystem services (i.e., the benefit that remains after subtracting key costs), taking the Beijing Plains afforestation project as an example. Furthermore, we analyzed the importance of scale effects and marginal changes in ecosystem services assessment, and highlighted the uncertainty of evaluation results caused by basing some of the analysis on market prices, which can change unpredictably. To better support conservation activities and maximize the ecological benefits obtained from an environmental strategy, it’s necessary to obtain accurate estimates of the net value of ecosystem services by accounting for an increasing range of direct and indirect costs, calculated at the same scale as the project implementation and accounting for marginal changes, thereby providing better support for policy development and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safeguarding food security is one of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. When food production reaches its technological peak, a shortage of arable land will be the key factor that limits food production. Thus, how to increase the area of arable land without ecological damage is a problem faced by the whole world. China is the world's most populous country and a traditional agricultural country. Under the pressure of rapid socioeconomic development, China has taken measures to protect its cultivated land from environmental degradation and protect its food security. By reviewing the research literature, we found several ways to increase the area of arable land while protecting this land from damage. We found that natural resources such as marginal and degraded lands could potentially be converted into arable land while still protecting the ecological environment. However, implementation of such a strategy must account for each region's unique ecological and socioeconomic conditions, and will require both support from appropriate policies and ongoing monitoring and support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]