On June 15, the internationally prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS, the impact factor was 9.803 in 2014) published online the latest research by associate professor Li Cong of School of Economics and Finance on assessment of ecosystem service value: Impacts of conservation and human development policy across stakeholders and scales.

The paper takes four years to finish, which is a signature research by professor Li Shuzhuo’s team of School of Economics and Finance and School of Public Policy and Administration, Ecological Environment Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences together with Stanford and University of Minnesota. The authors include professors Li Shuzhuo and Li Jie, and associate professor Zeng Weihong of School of Public Policy and Administration and a number of Chinese and American scientists.

Both theoretical and practical studies demonstrate that clarifying the costs, efficiency and time dynamics of different stakeholders in the ecological service delivery is crucial to scientific design, successful implementation of preservation tactics and policy development. However, clarifying where the ecological services take place, how the time dynamics of delivery is distributed, who is the benefiter has always been a challenge for policy evaluation. The research primarily studies the relocation program in Ankang, Shaanxi Province for the south-north water diversion project and adopts the household survey, InVEST（Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs）and cost-benefit analysis etc to look into the cost-benefit and time dynamics of immigrants relocation, local government, water users along the lower reaches, and global benefiters in the process of immigrant relocation program.

The findings show governments invest more in the short-term than they will possibly benefit from the program. However, in the long run the immigrants relocation program apparently increases the net benefits for local governments, water users of the lower reaches and global benefiters from water purification in ecosystem, soil retention and carbon sequestration service. However, this results in more relocation costs on the side of the relocated households. As a consequence, the impoverished peasants are excluded from the immigrant relocation program because of poor payment capacity. It’s suggested that increasing the relocation subsidy and subsistence support and receiving compensation from benefiters of improved water quality and carbon sequestration could help to achieve the expected goals. The research is based on the multi-scale delivery of ecosystem service and links the ecosystem service with different scales of stakeholders. The results will help to enhance the scientific design, reasonable evaluation and efficient implementation of preservation and development-related policies.

The research is supported by the National Fund of Natural Science and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation etc.

For the original paper, check http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/06/10/1406486112.abstract