Search Results (3)

The ecological compensation of cultivated land could also be called paying for the ecological service of cultivated land. It means that based on comprehensive consideration of the cost of the protection of the cultivated land and the value of the ecological service, the benefited area would implement the ecological compensation to the damaged area to motivate the actors of the protection behavior to protect the cultivated land better. A fair and reasonable cultivated land ecological compensation mechanism is critical in motivating cultivated land protection subjects’ active participation in cultivated land protection. However, most of the currently measured cultivated land ecological compensation standards are only determined from the perspective of a single interest, ignoring the participation and negotiation of cultivated land protection stakeholders, resulting in insufficient pertinence, low compensation standards, and low compensation efficiency. Therefore, by introducing a market mechanism, this study constructs a non-cooperative bargaining model and solves three stages of the game equilibrium solution under the condition of comprehensive consideration of interests of farmland ecosystem service providers and consumers. In this study, the Yangtze River Economic Belt is taken as the research area to provide empirical analysis of a cultivated land ecological game compensation standard between the subject and object of cultivated land ecological compensation in the area. The study found that, under the ecological compensation standard for cultivated land determined by the bargaining game, the cultivated land ecological compensation subject and object in the area meets the “KaldorHicks” resource allocation criterion, and the standard can take into account the interests of both parties. Meanwhile, the river basin horizontal ecological compensation quota determined by the game standard will neither cause a financial dilemma in the payment area due to the excessive compensation quota, nor financial “windfall gain” in the compensated area due to ecological finance transfer of cultivated land. The cultivated land ecological compensation standard based on the game between the two parties is reasonable and accurate for the cultivated land ecological compensation object, which not only functions as an economic incentive, but maintains long-term effectiveness of policy. Therefore, it is necessary to actively promote the determination of ecological compensation standards based on negotiation means, and to establish a sustainable ecological protection compensation mechanism involving government predomination, social engagement, and market-oriented operations, to drive marketization of cultivated land ecological compensation. Full article

All over the world, probability-based flood protection designs are the ones most commonly used. Different return-period design floods are standard criteria for designing structural measures. Recently, risk-based flood management has received a significant appraisal, but the fixed return period is still the de facto standard for flood management designs due to the absence of a robust framework for risk-based flood management. The objective of this paper is to discuss the economics and criteria of project appraisal, as well as to recommend the most suitable approach for a risk-based project feasibility evaluation. When it comes to flood management, decision-makers, who are generally politicians, have to prioritize the allocation of resources to different civic welfare projects. This research provides a connection between engineering, economics, and management. Taking account of socioeconomic and environmental constraints, several measures can be employed in a floodplain. The Kaldor–Hicks compensation principle provides the basis for a risk-based feasibility analysis. Floods should be managed in a way that reduces the damage from minimum investments to ensure maximum output from floodplain land use. Specifically, marginal losses due to flood damage and the expense of flood management must be minimized. This point of minimum expenses is known as the “optimum risk point” or “optimal state”. This optimal state can be estimated using a risk-based assessment. Internal rate of return, net present value, and benefit–cost ratio are indicators that describe the feasibility of a project. However, considering expected annual damage is strongly recommended for flood management to ensure a simultaneous envisage of the performance of land-use practices and flood measures. Flood management ratios can be used to describe the current ratio of expected annual damage to the expected annual damage at the optimal risk point. Further development of the approach may replace probability-based standards at the national level. Full article

With the process of globalization, many political geographers and research institutions have begun to focus on borders and border areas. Faced with the current debate on the border policies, this paper reviews the former research relating to border studies and provides an evaluation of China’s border policies. The literatures on border effects reveal that national boundaries have a significant impact on the economic, social and cultural relations of both border regions. Because of these effects, each country has to adjust its border policies in different periods. In this paper, a perspective is provided for evaluating the effectiveness of China’s border policy based on the Kaldor-Hicks analysis method. We investigated the border policies in Dehong Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan province of China from 1949 to 2012, and evaluated the effectiveness of the border policy using the Kaldor-Hicks method. The conclusions include: first, the Kaldor-Hicks method can be seen as effective method to evaluate the effectiveness of China’s border policies. Second, based on the Kaldor-Hicks method, we observe the overall effects of the adjustments made to the border policies in Dehong Prefecture were positive. However, sometimes the border trade policy is good for the country as a whole, but not necessarily for Dehong Prefecture. For the sake of the whole country, adjustments in border trade policy need to be compensated by financial transfer payments. In addition, the combined effects of the cross-border marriages policy are not immediately obvious. Full article