Forests or grasslands: conflicts over environmental conservation in arid and semiarid regions of China

Behind the Chinese government’s ambition to increase its forest cover to 15 % by 2050 is the large-scale tree plantation that continues to threaten millions of hectares of grasslands in China’s arid and semiarid regions. Though the negative environmental impacts of this tree plantation in arid and semiarid regions have been identified by some studies, there has been little sign of policy change. In order to understand why, we must be aware of the political processes that have sustained China’s tree-centered conservation approach for the past decades, but these processes have been largely left unexamined in existing scholarly literature. This study examines these processes by identifying the interest groups involved in environmental conservation, and the ways they leverage scientific knowledge for specific political objectives. This study argues that improved scientific understanding of natural systems will be insufficient to bring about positive environmental changes unless institutional balance is adjusted correspondingly.