Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), a top international journal published an academic paper ‘Poverty Alleviation Resettlement in China Reduces Deforestation’. The paper was coauthored by Professor Qiu Huanguang from Liaoning University (LNU), Dr. Chen Feifei from China University of Mining and Technology and Associate Professor Chen Wei from Renmin University of China.
The publication marks the 10th academic paper published in top international journals by teachers from the Faculty of Economics following Yu Miaojies’ publication in Review of Economics and Statistics, Chen Feng’s publication in Journal of Public Economics, Yu Miaojie and Yin Lijuan’s publication in Journal of Development Economics, Gao Ming’s publication in Journal of Economics & Management Strategy and Yang Zhe’s Publication in Journal of Labor Economics. This academic achievement presents a new breakthrough in terms of the ‘Double First-Class’ development at LNU.
Paper introduction
There is a vicious circle of ‘poverty and deforestation’. Excessive deforestation by poor population can lead to forest degradation and it will be difficult to recover in a short time. In turn, the loss of forest resources will further aggravate poverty. During the ‘Thirteenth Five-Year Plan’, China implemented the strategy of targeted poverty alleviation, which was a great feat in the history of poverty reduction in the world. However, current studies mainly analyze the social and economic effects of targeted poverty alleviation and its ecological and environmental effects have not been evaluated in depth.
In this study, the impact of relocating projects in poverty alleviation on county-level forest quality was evaluated and its micro-impact mechanism was tested by using multiple sets of macro-data such as county-level geographic remote sensing, climate monitoring, relocating projects and social economy as well as micro-field data collected from eight provinces and 16 counties. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) Relocating projects have significant positive ecological and environmental effects while reducing poverty, and deforestation in the relocating areas has been reduced and vegetation coverage has been significantly improved; (2) After relocating, the energy consumption structure of the households has changed to clean consumption and the firewood cutting has decreased significantly; (3) Relocating has also effectively alleviated ecological degradation by improving market availability, increasing non-agricultural employment opportunities and increasing income.
There are two main contributions of the study: first, it provides new empirical evidence for the ecological and environmental effects of relocating projects; The second is to reveal a number of mechanisms for relocating projects to alleviate deforestation. The research findings can provide experience for other developing countries to achieve poverty reduction and ecological protection simultaneously.
Journal introduction
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) is recognized as one of the four famous journals in the world (Cell, Nature, Science, PNAS) , enjoying a high reputation in the global academic communities. Since its founding in 1914, PNAS as an official academic publication of the National Academy of Sciences, has been the authoritative source of the world’s most influential original research in natural and social sciences.
Author introduction
Qiu Huanguang is a distinguished professor under the national talent program and an expert enjoying government special allowance under the State Council. He is also a scientist in economics of the national agricultural industrial technology system, President of Beijing Association of Agricultural Economics, Vice President of Chinese Association of Agricultural Technological Economics and Director of the Youth Working Committee of Chinese Society for Rural Development and Chinese Association of Agricultural Economics. He has been selected among the first batch of National Outstanding Youth Fund and National Youth Talent Program.
His research fields are agricultural economy, rural development, economy and policies on resources and the environment. He has presided over more than 10 projects of National Natural Science Found and National Social Science Fund. He has published more than 200 academic papers in journals at home and abroad, including more than 70 SCI/SSCI papers in international journals such as Proceeding of National Academy of Sciences, more than 130 papers in domestic journals such as Economic Research, Management World and China Economic Quarterly and 15 books in Chinese and English. He has won the second and third prizes of humanities and social sciences awards of the Ministry of Education, the first prize of soft science research of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the China Rural Development Research Award and the Zhang Peigang Development Economics Award.
