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Ecosystem degradation is a major cause of poverty, and poverty further aggravates ecosystem degradation through a feedback known as the 'poverty trap' that can prevent sustainable socioeconomic development in ecologically fragile areas. However, most ecological restoration programmes have failed to improve the lives of residents of the targeted areas because planners failed to understand the driving forces behind the poverty trap. Finding the threshold conditions for the poverty trap, which represent the conditions when the current state of a system changes to a new and inferior state, can help managers to avoid triggering the poverty trap in ecologically fragile areas. To avoid crossing the threshold, it's necessary to understand the driving mechanisms responsible for the poverty trap so that managers can break the vicious cycle that undermines the effectiveness of ecological restoration. China's ecological restoration has shown that integrating ecological restoration with measures that provide a sustainable livelihood for residents of programme areas can achieve the win–win goal of ecological restoration and poverty alleviation. We found preliminary evidence that there is an income threshold for the poverty trap, and that raising incomes above this level may help residents of restoration areas escape the trap. The examples described in this paper provide valuable guidance for other countries that must achieve similar goals. [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]

Desertification affects about 36 × 106 km2 of land around the world, two‐thirds of the world's countries and one‐fifth of its population, but poverty prevents these people from developing effective solutions. To balance the need for sustainable development with environmental protection, China's scientists have tested a new and more environmentally friendly approach based on ecological restoration projects that simultaneously provide a sustainable livelihood for the citizens affected by the projects. This strategy for controlling desertification requires cooperation among governments, scientists, and researchers from many disciplines and the communities affected by the program. To document the effectiveness of this strategy, we monitored the implementation of a programme to combat desertification in the Alxa League of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Our study showed that the new strategy can significantly increase vegetation cover, species richness, aboveground biomass, soil organic matter content, and soil nutrients. The successful ecological restoration provides potentially important lessons for other parts of the world that face the joint burden of poverty and environmental degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wetlands generate a wide range of ecosystem services that support human well‐being and socioeconomic development. However, calculation of the value of these services generally fails to account for their costs. In order to understand the difference between the value and the net value of ecosystem services (VES and NES, respectively), we used government statistics and data from published papers about the values and costs of wetland services to calculate their NES in mainland China. After accounting for the opportunity costs, investment in wetland conservation and protection, and management to prevent natural disasters, the NES of China's wetlands totaled 828.1 × 109 RMB in 2014, which is 36.4% less than the VES of 1,301.9 × 109 RMB calculated using the traditional approach. From 1952 to 2014, the NES of wetlands across the country (adjusted for inflation) decreased from 2,215.9 × 109 RMB to 828.1 × 109 RMB. Accounting for the costs to determine the net value of ecosystem services will provide a better foundation to support land planning and utilization. Plain Language Summary: Calculating the value of ecosystem services is important to support planning and land utilization. However, the traditional valuation approach fails to account for the costs of these services, and the resulting overestimated values may lead to unwise decisions. In this paper, we propose a model to estimate the costs of wetland ecosystem services, which include the opportunity costs of water and land, investments in wetland conservation and protection, as well as management to prevent natural disasters, thereby providing a better (more holistic) estimate based on the net value. The net value provides stronger support for decision‐making to support ecological conservation and environmental protection and will provide guidance for future land management. Key Points: The net ecosystem services value can reveal the real benefits of an ecosystemThe net value is more practical than the payment for ecosystem servicesThe net ecosystem services value provides decision‐making for ecological conservation and environmental protection [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flooding causes huge economic losses, yet the flood water is an important resource, especially in arid and semi-arid areas. Because rivers flood annually, most flooding research has focused on river management. Researchers have largely ignored the resource potential of flash floods, as they are less predictable. Here, we describe an innovative project in which disaster management planners in a dryland community in northwestern China treated flash floods as a resource rather than as a threat, and helped the community to benefit from this resource. The project produced ecological benefits (combating desertification), social benefits (flood control), and economic benefits (harvesting water for future use) that improved the community’s adaptive capacity and facilitated sustainable development. This example should inspire risk managers to seek ways to transform natural disasters into resources, thereby improving hazard management and promoting community survival and development. [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]

With rapid economic and population growth, water scarcities and conflicts over the available water are becoming worse, while climate change makes the potential risk to society unpredictable. To deal with growing water scarcity and improve the quality of water, China's government launched a large-scale afforestation program in the Tibetan Plateau—the birthplace of Asia's primary rivers, which lies upstream of 40% of the world's population, at a high altitude and with fragile ecosystems. However, this program could aggravate the conflict for water between humans and nature, because tree plantations consume 1.7 × 10 9 m 3 more water annually than the equivalent area of the region's natural vegetation. The shrinkage of glaciers caused by climate warming will exacerbate the water resource scarcity caused by these plantations and may soon become a primary source of conflict between regions that depend on river discharge from the plateau. To mitigate these problems, China's government should change its policy to conserve natural vegetation instead of planting more trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] China's unbalanced development strategy seems likely to lead to unsustainable socioeconomic development. [•] Urban development strategy should focus on small and medium cities. [•] Governments must share the benefits of China's economic growth more equally among regions. [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: Land degradation and poverty are problems that must be tackled together for environmental conservation to succeed. However, it is rarely possible to move a population from degraded land to another area where the people can be more easily sustained. To find a new strategy that achieves both conservation and economic gains without the need to relocate a population, we examined/investigated a sustainable combination of ecological and economic development suitable for the restoration of areas of China with collapsing gullies, where the frequent steep slopes make restoration difficult. The results showed that the degraded land may contain significant benefits that were previously unappreciated, thereby transforming a problem into an opportunity. Our results suggest that the new approach can both improve the livelihoods of local citizens and promote environmental conservation, leading to successful ecological restoration. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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]

• 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]