The conversion of forests into rubber plantations has led to a significant loss of forest cover in Xishuangbanna, China, over the past decades. Researchers from the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and their collaborators have developed a new payment system that aims to encourage landowners to convert rubber plantations back into close-to-nature rainforests. The combined market and government payment system splits payments for ecosystem services (PES) into two parts, with the economic benefit earned from market-priced ecosystem services, and compensation payments from the government.
Background
Rubber plantations have been a major cause of deforestation in many countries, including China. Xishuangbanna, a prefecture located in the southern part of Yunnan province, has experienced tremendous forest cover loss over the past few decades. This has led to a decline in biodiversity, soil erosion, and decreased water quality. Various measures have been proposed to address the issue, including the introduction of PES from the government to incentivize landowners to restore the land to its natural state.
The Challenge
PES from the government has been used in many countries to encourage conservation of natural resources, but it has not been successful in outcompeting the profit that smallholders expect to gain from rubber production. Therefore, researchers have been exploring alternative methods to incentivize landowners to convert rubber plantations back into close-to-nature rainforests.
The Solution
The researchers from XTBG and their collaborators have developed a combined payment system that aims to set incentives for farmers to convert rubber plantations into artificial rainforests that resemble natural rainforests and support the provision of ecosystem services. The system splits PES into two parts: the economic benefit that rubber farmer earns from market-priced ecosystem services and compensation payments from the government.
The Simulation
The researchers conducted a simulation study from 2020 to 2050 in Xishuangbanna to evaluate the potential impacts of the system. They chose artificial rainforest as the target ecosystem for reconverted lands since an intensively managed rubber plantation cannot be converted into a natural rainforest in the short term. In the baseline simulation, by 2050, most of the small patches would disappear due to low yield and small patch-first reconversion strategy. A total government payment of US$0.377 billion in net present value (NPV) would encourage a 50% reconversion of rubber plantations in Xishuangbanna, and the total carbon sequestration from the reconversion could reach 14,830,000 (tC).
Sensitivity Analyses
Sensitivity analyses revealed that rubber price was the most sensitive factor on the total NPV of compensatory payments, which was followed by the discount rate. This suggests that the price of rubber has a significant impact on the success of the payment system.
Journal Information: Wei-Guo Liu et al, Encouraging the reconversion of rubber plantations by developing a combined payment system, Global Ecology and Conservation (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.gecco.2023.e02415