China’s response to a national land-system sustainability emergency

China has responded to a national land-system sustainability emergency via an integrated portfolio of large-scale programmes. Here we review 16 sustainability programmes, which invested US$378.5 billion (in 2015 US$), covered 623.9 million hectares of land and involved over 500 million people, mostl...

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Published in:Nature (London) Vol. 559; no. 7713; pp. 193 - 204
Main Authors: Bryan, Brett A., Gao, Lei, Ye, Yanqiong, Sun, Xiufeng, Connor, Jeffery D., Crossman, Neville D., Stafford-Smith, Mark, Wu, Jianguo, He, Chunyang, Yu, Deyong, Liu, Zhifeng, Li, Ang, Huang, Qingxu, Ren, Hai, Deng, Xiangzheng, Zheng, Hua, Niu, Jianming, Han, Guodong, Hou, Xiangyang
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.07.2018
Nature Publishing Group
Subjects:
704/172/4081
704/844/685
Agricultural production
Agriculture
Biodiversity
China
Conservation of Natural Resources
Economic reform
Emergency response
Environmental degradation
Environmental policy
Environmental sustainability
Famine
Farmers
Feasibility studies
Floods
Food Supply
Forestry
Forests
Goals
Grassland
Grasslands
Humanities and Social Sciences
Industrial development
Land degradation
multidisciplinary
Natural resources
Perspective
Population growth
Privatization
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Soil
Sustainability
Sustainable agriculture
Sustainable development
Sustainable Development - economics
Sustainable Development - legislation & jurisprudence
Sustainable Development - trends
Timber
Time Factors
United Nations
Water
China
United States > US
Loess Plateau
ISSN:0028-0836, 1476-4687, 1476-4687
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:China has responded to a national land-system sustainability emergency via an integrated portfolio of large-scale programmes. Here we review 16 sustainability programmes, which invested US$378.5 billion (in 2015 US$), covered 623.9 million hectares of land and involved over 500 million people, mostly since 1998. We find overwhelmingly that the interventions improved the sustainability of China’s rural land systems, but the impacts are nuanced and adverse outcomes have occurred. We identify some key characteristics of programme success, potential risks to their durability, and future research needs. We suggest directions for China and other nations as they progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations’ Agenda 2030. China has addressed widespread rural poverty and environmental degradation head-on via unprecedented investment in sixteen large-scale sustainability programmes.
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ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/s41586-018-0280-2