Xia Sipa and his family live in Lushui County's Luzhang Town
nestled deep in Yunnan's Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture.
Sixty percent of his hometown's land area is covered by forests.
However, Xia's life has not been improved with the ecological
advantages, as he ekes out a living by working as a casual
laborer.
His family has over 4 mu (about 0.27 hectares) of
farmland, all sloping at over 25 degrees and with an annual corn
yield of only 500 kilograms.
According to Yang Zhonghua, secretary-general of the Nujiang Lisu
Autonomous Prefecture, the prefecture is among the poorest and most
underdeveloped regions in China. Sixty-six percent of the farming
population here live with average annual incomes of under 882 yuan
(US$111.5) and 33 percent with less than 637 yuan (US$80.6), not
enough for food or clothing.
Another 30,000 farmers living around the Caohai Lake State
Natural Reserves in Guizhou Province only have 0.5 mu
(0.03 hectares) of land per head since some of the cultivated lands
have been reverted to lakes or wetland for birds. Also in Guizhou,
the hunting ban in Maolan State Natural Reserves puts additional
pressure on farmers who cannot supplement their incomes.
Ecological crisis
For limited resources, farmers cultivated mountain slopes along the
Nujiang River, greatly damaging the vegetation and causing frequent
landslides, floods, mud flows, and other natural disasters. At
present, no virgin forest remains in mountain-areas below 1,500
meters and soil erosion in Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture has
covered a total area of 3,933 square kilometers, accounting for
26.7 percent of the prefecture's entire surface area, said
Yang.
According to Ren Xiaodong, director of the Environmental
Protection and Social Development Research Center at Guizhou Normal
University, more than 40 percent of China's forests as well as rare
flora and fauna are in western regions.
The environment and the sustaining of the western
regions are therefore crucial for ecological security in lower
reaches as well as for Chinese and global biological diversity.
Ecological compensation
According to some experts, there is a misconception that the
ecological environment is valueless. However, research shows that
the ecological value of natural forests is six or seven times that
of their economic value, but this enormous worth has not been
accounted for during economic construction and trading.
With the implementation of the "western development strategy,"
ecological compensation for western regions is underway as part of
a framework of policies and regulations. Yet these policies and
regulations have not clearly defined the benefits and liabilities
between the parties concerned in implementing and managing
ecological compensation.
All the ecological environment construction projects will not
succeed unless the agricultural industry in western areas is
restructured and the pressure on ecological environment is
lessened, observed Zhang Huiyuan, associated researcher with the
Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning.
At present, ecological compensation for related departments is
more than that for farmers and herdsmen. Compensation is given
mainly in terms of material and capital aids instead of industrial
support and production mode improvement.
Green tax
The taxation in effect in China couldn't fully present goals on
environmental protection either, said Zhang, adding that most
categories do not include environmental protection and sustainable
development factors.
Zhang called for setting up specific items of taxation targeting
environmental protection and gradually raising levies on water, air
and noise pollution and ecological compensation.
These will stimulate enterprises to advance pollution disposal
technology and will not halt enterprises' rights to freely choose
their means of pollution prevention, he said.
To restructure and improve the resource tax would also be
useful, said Zhang. He called for including mineral resources and
non-mineral resources into the levies and increasing taxes on water
resources to ease the increasingly strained supply of water.
Moreover, experts contributed following suggestions on
ecological protection and construction:
- To levy resource taxes on forestry and pastureland to avoid
ecological damage and to levy heavy taxes on rare and non-renewable
resources.
- To strictly prohibit or restrict the import of poisonous and
harmful chemicals or products that could do great damage to the
environment as well as raise the tariffs on these products by a big
margin.
- To improve the administrative, investment and financing
systems. The ecological environmental administration in China
concerns forestry, agriculture, water resources, land resources and
environmental protection departments, which lack an integrated
system. Collaboration should be established among them.
- To remove price subsidies on coal, irrigation water and other
means of production.
- To improve laws and regulations by clearly defining
compensation and protection liability for local authorities in the
ecological compensation system.
(China.org.cn by Li Shen, October 19, 2006)