Can Solar Photovoltaic Poverty Alleviation Policies Reduce Carbon Emissions and Increase Income in China?

China implemented a solar photovoltaic (PV) poverty alleviation (PVPA) policy of building nearly 0.24 million PVPA power plants in 2014-2020 to fight poverty. However, our current knowledge of its effects, encompassing not only primary poverty alleviation but also secondary objectives such as carbon emission-reduction, remains comparatively constrained. Here, we present a comprehensive assessment of the emission-reducing and income-increasing effects of the PVPA policy using estimated carbon emission factors and a staggered difference-in-difference model based on integrated data from almost all actual PVPA plants in China. Our analysis revealed the co-benefits of emission-reduction and poverty alleviation, with PVPA policy boosting villagers' per capita net income by 2-3% in villages with PV plants. A nonlinear, inverted U-shaped relationship between income and PVPA plant investment was identified with a $2.21 million inflection point. Spatial heterogeneity was observed in the income-increasing effect, with centralized village-level plants proving more effective than rooftop household plants. China's PVPA plants reduced carbon emissions by nearly 3% in 2020 and are projected to generate 774 billion kW h of electricity by 2045, mitigating 715.75 million tons of carbon emissions. The findings from this research offer insights for optimizing antipoverty and climate change policies to facilitate sustainable development goal achievement in China and other developing nations.

The impact of political status and social capital on herders' overgrazing behaviors in the pastoral areas of China.

Overgrazing has become one of the main factors affecting grassland degradation over the past two decades in China. To solve this problem, the government has implemented a grassland ecological compensation policy and grazing monitoring system that is highly dependent on rural cadres. However, few studies have analyzed the impact of political status (rural cadres' identity) on overgrazing. This study reveals the impact of political status on herders' overgrazing behavior. It evaluates the moderating effect of social capital on this impact using a linear regression model based on survey data from 640 herder households in Inner Mongolia, Gansu, and Qinghai, China. The results show that herders with political status are more likely to overgraze. The level of trust in rural cadres has a positive moderating effect on the influence of political status on herders' overgrazing. Small farms with political status are more likely to overgraze compared to large farms. Grazing monitoring by local government can reduce the overgrazing of herders with political status and weaken the positive effects of political status and the trust level in rural cadres regarding overgrazing. Therefore, local governments should monitor more strictly grazing activities for herders with political status, especially those with small grassland scales, and pay more attention to the role of herders' social capital in constructing a sustainable grassland governance mechanism.

Intended and unintended environmental consequences of grassland rental in pastoral China.

Among herders, market-oriented grassland rental has been prevalent in China following the implementation of the Household Contracted Responsibility System, which allocated formerly collectively-owned use rights to individual herders. However, empirical evidence on the effect of grassland rental on herder households' overgrazing behaviour is scant, despite the fact that it is one of the main determinants of the severe grassland degradation in China. This study thus investigates the effects of grassland rental on both household- and plot-level grazing intensity and overgrazing based on a survey of 876 plots and 516 households in the Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, and Gansu provinces in China. An instrumental variable approach is utilised to correct the endogeneity bias of herders' decision to rent in grassland. The household-level empirical results show that each 1000-mu increment of rent-in grassland leads to an intended 42% decrease in the overall grazing intensity and a 61% decrease in the overgrazing index. However, a plot-level analysis pooling both rent-in and self-owned grassland plots reveals the unintended consequence that herders are over-exploiting rent-in grassland plots; as a result, the grazing intensity on rent-in grassland is 2.03 times that on owned grassland. Therefore, grassland rental should be encouraged, but the monitoring system should pay more attention to the overgrazing of rental grassland.

The impact of climate change on livestock production in pastoral areas of China.

This study assesses the impacts of climate change on net livestock revenue, grazing intensity, and net revenue per livestock, based on a panel dataset of 959 herder households from 18 counties in three major pastoral provinces in China. The Ricardian model and the Hsiao two-step method are applied to quantify the impacts on household-level livestock production made by long-term changes of temperature and precipitation and short-term occurrence of natural disasters. The results indicate that long-term temperature leads to decreased net livestock revenue and net revenue per livestock, whereas long-term precipitation improves revenue per livestock. Next, both long-term annual temperature and precipitation result in an increase of grazing intensity. A further analysis based on the simulation of future climate change predicts that the future increase in temperature will have a negative influence on both net revenue and net revenue per livestock, while the precipitation increment will have a positive effect on livestock production.

Balancing water resource conservation and food security in China.

China's economic growth is expected to continue into the next decades, accompanied by sustained urbanization and industrialization. The associated increase in demand for land, water resources, and rich foods will deepen the challenge of sustainably feeding the population and balancing agricultural and environmental policies. We combine a hydrologic model with an economic model to project China's future food trade patterns and embedded water resources by 2030 and to analyze the effects of targeted irrigation reductions on this system, notably on national agricultural water consumption and food self-sufficiency. We simulate interprovincial and international food trade with a general equilibrium welfare model and a linear programming optimization, and we obtain province-level estimates of commodities' virtual water content with a hydrologic model. We find that reducing irrigated land in regions highly dependent on scarce river flow and nonrenewable groundwater resources, such as Inner Mongolia and the greater Beijing area, can improve the efficiency of agriculture and trade regarding water resources. It can also avoid significant consumption of irrigation water across China (up to 14.8 km(3)/y, reduction by 14%), while incurring relatively small decreases in national food self-sufficiency (e.g., by 3% for wheat). Other researchers found that a national, rather than local, water policy would have similar effects on food production but would only reduce irrigation water consumption by 5%.

Water resources transfers through Chinese interprovincial and foreign food trade.

China's water resources are under increasing pressure from socioeconomic development, diet shifts, and climate change. Agriculture still concentrates most of the national water withdrawal. Moreover, a spatial mismatch in water and arable land availability--with abundant agricultural land and little water resources in the north--increases water scarcity and results in virtual water transfers from drier to wetter regions through agricultural trade. We use a general equilibrium welfare model and linear programming optimization to model interprovincial food trade in China. We combine these trade flows with province-level estimates of commodities' virtual water content to build China's domestic and foreign virtual water trade network. We observe large variations in agricultural water-use efficiency among provinces. In addition, some provinces particularly rely on irrigation vs. rainwater. We analyze the virtual water flow patterns and the corresponding water savings. We find that this interprovincial network is highly connected and the flow distribution is relatively homogeneous. A significant share of water flows is from international imports (20%), which are dominated by soy (93%). We find that China's domestic food trade is efficient in terms of rainwater but inefficient regarding irrigation, meaning that dry, irrigation-intensive provinces tend to export to wetter, less irrigation-intensive ones. Importantly, when incorporating foreign imports, China's soy trade switches from an inefficient system to a particularly efficient one for saving water resources (20 km(3)/y irrigation water savings, 41 km(3)/y total). Finally, we identify specific provinces (e.g., Inner Mongolia) and products (e.g., corn) that show high potential for irrigation productivity improvements.

[Regional differences and development tendency of livestock manure pollution in China].

The rapid development of livestock production in China has brought livestock manure pollution as a serious environment problem, even threatens China's agriculture sustainable development. On the basis of public statistical data and field research data, this paper analyzed the magnitude of livestock manure excretion and pollution of China and different provinces in 2010, and predicted development tendencies of livestock manure excretion and pollution in 2020 through the Decision Support System for China's Agricultural Sustainable Development (CHINAGRO). The result shows that total livestock manure excretion of China in 2010 is 1 900 million tons, and livestock manure pollution is 227 million tons, while per hectare arable land of livestock manure pollution is 1.86 tons. Provinces in the southeast China, such as Guangdong and Fujian, are areas with high pressure of livestock manure pollution. Model simulation shows that China's total amount of livestock manure pollution will increase to 298 million tons in 2020 without government intervention. The pressure of livestock manure pollution will become higher in most regions of China, especially in east and south regions. The situation in central and western region is better than that in east regions although the pollution pressure will also increase in those areas. Policy intervention such as taxes and subsidies should be adopted to reduce the discharge of livestock manure pollution, and encourage livestock production transfer from eastern areas to the central and western regions.

Biofuel development, food security and the use of marginal land in China.

With concerns of energy shortages, China, like the United States, European Union, and other countries, is promoting the development of biofuels. However, China also faces high future demand for food and feed, and so its bioenergy program must try to strike a balance between food and fuel. The goals of this paper are to provide an overview of China's current bioethanol program, identify the potential for using marginal lands for feedstock production, and measure the likely impacts of China's bioethanol development on the nation's future food self-sufficiency. Our results indicate that the potential to use marginal land for bioethanol feedstock production is limited. Applying a modeling approach based on highly disaggregated data by region, our analysis shows that the target of 10 million t of bioethanol by 2020 seems to be a prudent target, causing no major disturbances in China's food security. But the expansion of bioethanol may increase environmental pressures due to the higher levels of fertilizer use. This study shows also that if China were able to cultivate 45% of its required bioethanol feedstock on new marginal land, it would further limit negative effects of the bioethanol program on the domestic and international economy, but at the expense of having to apply another 750 thousand t of fertilizer.

Awareness, acceptance of and willingness to buy genetically modified foods in Urban China.

There is concern about the extent to which consumers will accept genetically modified (GM) foods if they are commercialized in China. The evidence from the existing literature is mixed and sometimes confusing. The objective of this study is to conduct a large in-depth face-to-face in-house survey that examines the consumers' awareness, acceptance of and willingness to buy GM foods in China. To achieve this objective, a well-designed consumer survey was conducted in 11 cities of five provinces in Eastern China in 2002 and 2003. The results indicate that despite much less information on GM foods available publicly in China, more than two thirds of consumers in urban areas have heard of GM foods. But their knowledge on biotechnology was limited. Chinese consumers' acceptance of and willingness to buy GM foods was much higher than in other countries. Chinese consumers also demonstrated great variance in their acceptance of different GM foods. Information and prices of GM foods were two important factors affecting consumers' attitudes toward GM foods. Based on the findings of this study and given that our sample is in the more developed eastern Urban China, we conclude that the commercialization of GM foods is not likely to receive great resistance from the consumers in China.