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Good practice Imported

Grain for Green / Sloping Land Conversion Programme (China)

China · Loess Plateau · See the China profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 18% 60/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

The world's largest PES: since 1999 China has paid 30M+ rural households to convert ~29.8M hectares of sloping cropland to forest to curb erosion, investing over ¥430bn — at vast scale, with debated ecological quality.

~29.8M ha
Sloping farmland converted to forest (since 1999)
30M+
Rural households paid
¥430bn+
Investment
Grain for Green / Sloping Land Conversion Programme (China)

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Government of China
Keywords
Sloping cropland converted to forest, State payments for ecosystem services

Context

Grain for Green (the Sloping Land Conversion Programme) is the world's largest payments-for-ecosystem-services scheme; since 1999 China has paid more than 30M rural households to convert sloping farmland to forest to curb erosion.

Results

Around 29.8M ha have been converted at an investment of more than ¥430bn, though the ecological quality of the new forests is debated.

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

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Data sources

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