Is there decentralization in North Korea? Evidence and lessons from the sloping land management program 2004–2014

In the 1990s, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) suffered from severe food shortages and large-scale deforestation, which triggered a stage of rural conservation reform. Since 2004, with support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), North Korea’s Ministry of Land and Environmental Protection (MoLEP) has implemented a Sloping Land Management Program (SLMP). The SLMP established sloping land user groups and granted these groups the right to use marginal land for agroforestry development. This devolution of land rights from state control onto local groups is a landmark in North Korea, and this decentralization initiative has now expanded to over eight counties to involve thousands of households. It has also led to the launch of a National Agroforestry Policy and Strategy. Drawing from both qualitative and quantitative data collected from 2008 to 2014, this paper documents the process and effects of the SLMP. It argues that the decentralization reform in land management has contributed to not only food security with increased food crop diversity and productivity, but also notably forest recovery through an expansion of tree plantations and agroforestry practices on degraded sloping lands. However, an insufficient power transfer in the form of a lack of timber rights granted to the local user groups has hampered the effectiveness of the SLMP. There are also institutional and geopolitical challenges that are limiting further scaling-up of land-use decentralization across the country. The policy implication calls for more international investment as well as national land-use policy reforms in order to promote and facilitate further decentralization of sloping land management and to secure greater use rights for sloping land user groups.     

Industrial land price between China’s Pearl River Delta and Southeast Asian regions: Competition or Coopetition?

The planned economy system’s previous form of industrial land market control in China has led to current market failure because of a large amount of industrial land being sold at a very low price, causing extensive overuse of land and negative effects on land management. As the “World Factory”, the Pearl River Delta (PRD) is well known for its rapid urbanization largely driven by Foreign Direct Investment in labor-intensive industries. A low-land price strategy has been commonly adopted by the local government in order to attract industrial investment. In the past decade, the PRD has increasingly faced the increasing competition from its neighboring competition from its neighboring countries in Southeast Asia that have established preference policies to attract FDI and foreign enterprises. Despite a growing body of literature on the internal forces of industrial land in China, little is known of the external forces involved except for the importance of FDI and the intensity of interregional competition between China and other countries in attempting to attract foreign investment. This research fills the knowledge gap by modeling the situation in the form of an international cooperative game model aimed at revealing the industrial land price formation mechanism between the PRD region and Southeast Asian regions. The conditions of industrial land in the area and several Southeast Asian countries are first analyzed for their industrial land price movements in recent years. A game theoretic model is then built that exhibits similar characteristics. The result indicates that the governments’ low land price strategy and the competition between the PRD and its neighboring countries have created unnecessarily high social and environmental costs. Policy suggestions are made to encourage a more appropriate use of industrial land in China, and the most important being the need for a mindset shift from competition towards coopetition between the PRD and Southeast Asian regions.     

Theoretical analysis and model design of search for ecological conservation redlines based on the sensitivity assessment of ecosystem services

Most small-scale social economies are characterised by their deficiency, lack, and/or difficulty in matching natural data. Against this backdrop, this paper builds a relatively uniform theoretical framework and designs a more economical and objective method for demarcating ecological conservation redlines (ECR) based on sensitivity assessment of ecosystem services. The results show that the sensitivity assessment model designed in this study can identify sensitive zones effectively, and that the ECR in Hubei Province are well within the sensitive zones so identified. The delimited areas based on the sensitive assessment of ecosystem services have great similarities (95%) with the actual ECR areas in Hubei Province. The most ecologically important functional zones (EIFZ) can also be identified using the regional ecological sensitivity coefficient. When the threshold of EIFZ is set higher, the probability that it falls within the ecologically sensitive areas is greater and the ECR delimited by the method proposed in this study will be more reliable. Theoretically, the delimitation of ECR can be inserted at any evaluation level with a grid resolution higher than that of the land use data, which can be used as a supplement to the ECR delimitation method in ecology or geography.     

The influence of risk preferences,knowledge, land consolidation,and landscape diversification on pesticide use

Researchers have spent substantial effort to identify factors influencing pesticide use intensity. However, few studies have compared the relative importance of these factors. This study examines four categories of factors that potentially influence farmers’ pesticide use decisions by evaluating incentivized experiment data, farm survey data, and remote sensing data in China. Our results suggest that land diversification has the largest effect on farmers’ pesticide use. Compared with the most rice-intensive landscape type, less rice-intensive systems cause farmers to spray less on middle rice. Heavy pesticide use intensity is associated with land fragmentation as small-scale farms still dominate crop production. Farmers’ integrated pest management knowledge has significant effects on pesticide use. We also find that loss and ambiguity preferences, rather than risk preferences, are more likely to affect pesticide use intensity.     

基于结构方程模型的集聚农户共生认知及影响因素分析:以重庆市为例

研究目的:探讨对集聚农户共生、集聚区土地利用率提高的影响因素,为提升农户共生的认知水平、优化农户共生关系及促进资源的节约集约利用提供有效路径及理论指导。研究方法:参与式农户调查,结构方程模型。研究结果:(1)户主自身特征、农户家庭特征、集聚共生效益特征及外部环境与政策特征这4类外源潜变量对农户共生认知产生重要影响且影响程度大小不同,其中,集聚共生效益特征的影响最为显著,外部环境与政策特征、户主自身特征和农户家庭特征的影响依次减弱;(2)是否为干部、对原集聚模式的满意度、是否促进农户生产生活条件和政府对集聚区的补贴力度分别对这4类外源潜变量具有较好的解释能力。研究结论:显化农户共生效益、增强"精英"农户及村干部的正向引导、提升农户成员受教育水平、培养农户"共生共荣"理念等是深化农户共生关系,促进和谐乡村人居环境建设的重要路径。     

Organizing anarchy: The food security–biodiversity–climate crisis and the genesis of rural land use planning in the developing world

Shortfalls in global food production, coupled with the growing visibility of climate change's disruptive effects, have underlined for many observers the importance of devoting rural lands to their ‘optimal’ use, where they can make maximal contributions to the global imperatives of feeding the human population and maintaining vital environmental services. In this context observers have endorsed rural land use planning as a way to insure that, at least in theory, lands get devoted to their best uses. In practice, land use planning in the developing world has resembled ‘organized anarchy’. Small landholders with insecure land tenure, overseas investors seeking large land deals, NGOs representing indigenous peoples, government officials, and staff from international environmental NGOs and multilateral organizations have come together in strategic action fields to struggle over and sometimes negotiate land use plans for contested landscapes. These plans represent a strategic, spatially explicit response to the climate change–biodiversity–food security crisis.     

日本土地区画整理融资立法以及对中国的启示

中国建设用地整理融资滞后制约了建设用地整理的整体效益与规模,相关立法是规范、保障建设用地融资的基本要件。日本土地区画整理融资立法在规范体例、融资组织结构确立和融资模式设定上的经验,可为中国建设用地整理融资立法予以借鉴。应健全相关立法体系,确立符合国情的多元复合型建设用地整理融资结构,完善建设用地整理融资机构的职能。     

基于通勤行为的小城镇土地利用与格局优化对策研究——以扬中市为例

研究目的:从居民的通勤行为特征中寻求小城镇土地利用格局优化路径,为产城融合的实现提供理论支持。研究方法:构建通勤流矩阵,运用Arc GIS路径分析测算通勤距离,并通过缓冲区分析通勤距离在空间上的特征,并与土地利用类型进行对比分析,同时建立通勤距离与社会经济因素的回归方程,分析通勤距离的影响因素。研究结果:小城镇通勤方式以便捷型工具为主,通勤高峰集中于上下班,通勤距离随着城镇化和工业化水平的提高,短距离占比增大。主要结论:在城镇化和工业化发展较快的区域,短距离通勤集聚更具有"同心圆"特征,核心力更强。工业化带动的聚集结构呈现出"条带形"态势,与区域工业布局结构有较密切的关系,也与城镇化和工业化扩增融合有关。短距离通勤集聚区会随着城镇化水平的提高而由"双核"向"单核"结构发展,并针对以上问题提出了相应的对策。     

论税法中公平原则的时间效应--以房产税为例

税法中的公平分为短期公平和长期公平，以房产税法为例，满足短期公平未必不是对长期公平的扭曲。由于我国一直以来存在的土地制度、城镇住房结构以及地区发展不平衡等因素均能在时间效应上影响到房产税的长期公平，因此房产税改革是一个非常综合和复杂的事项，必须将多项因素纳入考虑的范围，以实现税法的长期公平。