AN ENVIRONMENTAL RATIONALE: STRATEGIES TO RECONCILE THE GRADUATED INTEREST OF NORTHWESTERN CHINA’S ECO-MODERNIZATION PROGRAMS

Abstract

From 1980 to 2010, the Chinese government introduced a set of environmental programs across northwestern China, including Three-North Shelterbelt Program, Suspended Village Migration, 1236 Yellow River Irrigation Program, Natural Forest Protection Program, Sloping Land Conversion Program, and Converting Pastures to Grasslands Program. Focusing on the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, this paper explores the overlaps and frictions between China’s large environmental programs, and reveals some of the limitations of these programs in the eco-modernization framework by studying the graduated interest under agricultural comprehensive development and scenarios in three case studies. Compared with the insights from eco-modernization, the conservation refugee and eco-refugee binary framework could review complex interaction and overlapping histories from these coexisting programs, so that resources could be distributed better and alternative ways of greening work of northwestern china could be explored.

Keywords

Ningxia / Eco-Modernization Programs / Graduated Interest / Resettlement / Conservation Refugee / Eco-Refugee / Binary Framework

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Higher Education Press