The large-scale loss of ecosystem assets around the world, and the resultant reduction in the provision of nature’s benefits to people, underscores the urgent need for better metrics of ecological performance as well as their integration into decision-making. Gross ecosystem product (GEP) is a measure of the aggregate monetary value of final ecosystem-related goods and services in a specific area and for a given accounting period. GEP accounting captures the use of many ecosystem services in production processes across the economy, which are then valued in terms of their benefits to society. GEP has five key elements that make it transparent, trackable, and readily understandable: (1) a focus on nature’s contributions to people; (2) the measurement of ecosystem assets as stocks and ecosystem services as flows; (3) the quantification of ecosystem service use; (4) an understanding of ecosystem service supply chains through value realization; and (5) the disaggregation of benefits across groups. Correspondingly, a series of innovative policies based on GEP have been designed and implemented in China. The theoretical and practical lessons provided by these experiences can support continued policy innovation for green and inclusive development around the world.

The tradeoffs and synergies of ecosystem services are widely discussed and recognized. However, explicit information for understanding and managing the complex relationships of multiple ecosystem services at regional scales is still lacking, which often leads to the degradation of important ecosystem services due to one ecosystem service being enhanced over another. We assessed the biodiversity and the production of nine ESs (ecosystem services) across 779 counties in the Yangtze River Basin, the largest basin in China. Then, we mapped the distribution of ES for each county and used correlations and “partitioning around medoids” clustering analysis to assess the existence of ES bundles. We found five distinct types of bundles of ecosystem services spatially agglomerated in the landscape, which could be mainly explained by land use, slope and altitude gradients. Our results also show landscape-scale tradeoffs between provisioning and almost all regulating services (and biodiversity), and synergies among almost all regulating services (and biodiversity). Mapping ecosystem service bundles can identify areas in a landscape where ecosystem management has produced exceptionally desirable or undesirable sets of ecosystem services, and can also provide explicit, tailored information on landscape planning for ecosystem service conservation and the design of payment policies for ecosystem services within diverse landscapes at watershed scales.

Plantations support local economies and rural livelihoods in many mountainous regions, where poverty and a fragile environment are often interlinked. Managing plantations sustainably and alleviating poverty is a major challenge. This study reports on the findings of a household livelihood survey in the central mountainous region of Hainan Island, a global biodiversity hotspot. The survey aimed to identify rural household livelihoods, strategies to lift rural households out of poverty and potential environmental consequences of different livelihood strategies. Households were divided into five groups based on their main source of income: plantations, crops, livestock, local off-farm income and remittances. Plantations were the main source of income for 74% of households and provided 46% of the total income. Plantation land area, planting diverse tree species and intercropping were significantly associated with higher income. Reallocating land by family size could increase the proportion of households above the poverty line in the plantation group from 51.3% to 85.3%, while making only 3.3% of households worse off. Lower income households tended to apply more chemicals to plantations, which suggests that they create more strain on the environment. Improving household income through dynamically allocating plantation land and diversifying planted species could therefore be beneficial both socially and environmentally. Our results emphasize the importance of dynamic plantation land allocation and diverse plantation planting in poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability.

Recently, increasingly sophisticated studies have investigated the relationship between agrarian livelihoods and the environment, as well as rural–urban interactions in developing countries. The policies developed to respond to these dynamics can constrain livelihood options or provide additional opportunities. In the present study, using a modified version of the telecoupled sustainable livelihood framework to generalize dynamic livelihood strategies in the context of rural–urban transformation and by focusing on recent research in China, we review important factors that shape rural livelihood strategies as well as the types of strategies that typically intersect with livelihood and environmental dynamics. We then examine telecoupled rural–urban linkages given that the dynamics of the livelihood strategies of farmers can cause flows of labor, capital, ecosystem services, and other processes between rural and urban areas, thereby placing livelihood strategies in a dynamic context, which has not been considered widely in previous research. We show that most previous studies focused on the reduction of environmental impacts via livelihood diversification and rural–urban migration. We propose several areas for future policy development and research.

The widespread dissemination of policy information is necessary for the success of the public policy, but the distribution of information among vulnerable groups has received little attention. We examined a public policy that focuses on the poorest people in China, the anti-poverty relocation and settlement program (ARSP). The infrastructure in the region where the policy is implemented is weak, and the information literacy of resettlers is low. This study analyses the impact of the policy information gap on the subjective well-being of resettlers. We found that the distribution of policy information among the poor is uneven, and the resettlers compare the policy information they obtain with a reference group (working-age people and less-educated people in the same village/community) to generate a policy information gap. The policy information gap indirectly affects subjective well-being by affecting the probability that people will be exposed to risks due to policy. As the policy information gap increases, the subjective well-being of resettlers changes in an inverted U-shape. This impact varies significantly among different groups, policy implementation stages, and resettlement methods. Attention should be paid to the information acquisition ability of the vulnerable groups and the welfare effects of social comparison, and to improve the method of publicizing policy information, which helps to improve the well-being of resettlers.

Nitrogen (N) budgets have been computed in many countries at various scales to improve understanding of N-balance characteristics and to assess the environmental pollution risks of applying chemical fertilizer N. However, dynamic characteristics, driving forces, and potential soil fertility consequences related to cropland N balance have seldom been discussed, especially in regions with highly fertile soils and low N-use intensities. This study investigated the temporal and spatial characteristics of N balance, and the impact of agricultural development on the agro-ecosystems of the Sanjiang Plain, one of the largest producers of commodity food grains in China. County-level agricultural statistics at five-year intervals were used to calculate agricultural N balances, N surplus intensity, and N-use efficiency between 2005 and 2015. Agricultural development has brought about continual increases in cultivated land area, consumption of chemical fertilizers, and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE). Nitrogen surplus intensity decreased from 65.0 kg/ha in 2005 to 43.5 kg/ha in 2010, and to 22.2 kg/ha in 2015. However, NUE was >90% in 13 counties in 2015, and in 11 counties in 2010. In contrast, only 5 counties had NUE above 90% in 2005, which indicates that N from the soil was used by crops and soil fertility was gradually decreasing. The percentage change of crop area, namely, the increase in maize area percentage, contributed significantly to the increases in NUE. A judicious management of fertilizers that meets the nutrient needs of the crops and ensures agricultural sustainability on the Sanjiang Plain is therefore essential. The findings of this study emphasize the importance of assessing the impact of crop structure adjustment on soil fertility and nitrogen balance during agricultural development.