Economic development and farmland protection: An assessment of rewarded land conversion quotas trading in Zhejiang,China

Facing a substantial loss of farmland in the reform era, the Chinese central government established a highly centralized land management system in 1998 to guarantee its capacity to meet the domestic food needs. In order to maintain high-speed economic growth, local governments in China made great efforts to circumvent the stringent constraint on land use by launching various innovative land management schemes, among which Zhejiang's rewarded land conversion quotas (RLCQ) trading scheme, a program similar to the transfer of development rights (TDR) in Western countries, has attracted a lot of policy and scholarly attention. In this research, we first provide an overview of China's farmland protection policy and the RLCQ trading scheme in Zhejiang Province. Then, using the system GMM estimator for economic growth models and a panel dataset of 69 local jurisdictions in Zhejiang Province covering the period of 1989–2008, we assess the impacts of RLCQ trading on local economic growth. The empirical results corroborate our hypotheses that participation in land quota trading in general led to faster local economic growth, and that the trading had a stronger and more lasting impact on the economic growth of the quota buyers than on that of the sellers. The analysis suggests that in order to balance the competing goals of economic development and farmland protection, market-based land management tools have a good potential for further development in China and other countries confronting similar challenges.     

土地利用总体规划建设用地指标区域动态分配问题研究

研究目的:优化土地利用总体规划建设用地指标的区域配置。研究方法:对比分析法,多因素综合分析法和主成分分析法。研究结论:提出了土地利用总体规划建设用地指标区域动态分配的思路,通过对土地利用的综合效益进行及时监测和评价,动态调整建设用地指标,增强了建设用地指标区域分配的合理性,有助于发挥土地利用的比较优势,提高土地资源的区域配置效率,激励地方政府高效利用土地资源,实现区域土地利用总体福利的最大化。     

中国东、中、西部之间耕地保护协调——土地效率理论存在的问题

研究目的:分析土地效率理论(以效率分配农地非农化指标理论)存在的问题,研究地区间耕地保护协调的方法。研究方法:文献法,理论分析法及计量经济方法。研究结果:农地非农化指标的分配不应该仅根据效率差异决定,而应综合考虑各生产要素之间的关系。研究结论:(1)如果在地区间实行非农化指标转移,补偿机制是否建立依赖于两地区资金对土地边际技术替代率的关系;(2)以用地效率来指导非农化指标分配的思路能够提高两地区总体的产出水平,但两地区之间公平会受到损害;(3)农地非农化指标转移等类似政策制定应充分考虑制度成本和交易成本。     

耕地保护补偿资金分配认知及其影响因素探究 ——基于全国563份地方国土管理人员①调查问卷的实证分析

研究目的:调查中国土地公有制和城乡二元特征影响下,地方国土管理人员对耕地保护补偿政策的认知,探索耕地保护补偿资金分配的影响因素。研究方法:基于对全国不同省市563份针对地方国土管理人员的问卷调查数据,结合已有文献和社会现实,采用描述性分析和因子分析法进行分析。研究结果:大部分地方国土管理人员认为耕地保护补偿资金分配应依据耕地面积、质量和区域特征,并认为耕地实际使用者和农村集体组织是最需要补偿的主体,更加注重分配可持续性与长效性。研究结论:耕地保护补偿资金分配与经济发展、耕地资源禀赋以及耕地保护情况密切相关,在补偿分配观念上的积极转变是提高补偿资金使用效率的重要措施之一。     

Local interests or centralized targets? How China’s local government implements the farmland policy of Requisition–Compensation Balance

The Requisition–Compensation Balance of Farmland (RCBF) is a strict policy in China aimed at controlling farmland conversion and replenishing farmland loss caused by urban expansion through a set of top-down quotas. These conflict with local interests, since land conversion from agriculture to construction is a key tool by which local governments attract investment and raise fiscal revenue. How should local authorities respond to this centralized policy? This paper presents a framework “quantity–quality–productivity–environment” to investigate local governments’ coping strategy and the holistic performance of the RCBF. The empirical study indicated that local jurisdictions placed economic and financial growth first and continued expropriating farmland on a large-scale, including land of high quality, for development. However, impelled by compulsory quotas and supervision from governments at higher levels, local authorities would partly replenish the quantity loss through farmland exploitation, regardless of the quality of the new cropland and the possible environmental impact. Consequently, fast requisition and unqualified compensation undermined the capacity of regional agricultural output. We suggest that the RCBF is not capable of guaranteeing food security, whilst farmland supplementation threatens the local environment.     

Conversion of agricultural and forest land to other purposes in the context of land protection: Evidence from Polish experience

The protection of agricultural land and forests is a relatively new concept in Poland, and it began with forest protection in the 1920s. The first regulations on the protection of agricultural land were introduced only in the 1960s. Agricultural land and forests received comprehensive protection pursuant to the provisions of the Act of 26 October 1977 on the protection of agricultural land, forests and land recultivation. This legal act set the foundations for the protection of farmland and forests in successive decades.The aim of this study was to determine the influence of farmland and forest protection on spatial planning and to highlight the loss of agricultural and forest land resulting from conversion to other purposes. Legal regulations pertaining to spatial planning and the protection of agricultural and land forests were analysed. The scale of the problem was identified, and future land-use types were forecast based on the data developed by Statistics Poland (GUS). The existing spatial plans (municipal master plan - MMP) were analysed to determine the conversion loss index (CLI) associated with the conversion of agricultural land and forests to other uses. Legal regulations pertaining to the protection of agricultural land and forests were also analysed, and the extent of the relevant conversion measures was determined. The study demonstrated that urban development and the inevitable urbanization of rural areas contribute to the loss of agricultural and forest land that are converted to other uses.     

The Farmland Rental Paradox: Extreme land ownership fragmentation as a new form of land degradation

Extreme farmland ownership fragmentation is becoming a limiting factor for sustainable land management in some countries. Scattered, excessively small parcels cease to be viable for individual farming, and owners feel forced to rent these parcels to larger enterprises farming on adjacent land. Our study demonstrates a phenomenon that we call the Farmland Rental Paradox, where very small parcels tend to create large production blocks by being rented to larger farmers, and therefore to significantly homogenize the land-use pattern. The parcel size established as the threshold for this phenomenon is 1.07 ha. Below this threshold, the smaller the parcels were, the larger the blocks that they tended to create.Using the example of the Czech Republic, a state with extremely high farmland ownership fragmentation, it is demonstrated that this phenomenon can currently determine the land use of up to 40% of the country's farmland. Our study also points to other countries where this phenomenon may apply, especially the transitional countries of Central and Eastern Europe.The study discusses the tempo of the fragmentation process, which accelerates exponentially in countries with the equal inheritance system. It goes on to discuss defragmentation, social impacts of the dominance of the land rental market, and environmental impacts of significant homogenization of the land-use pattern. The serious negative impacts of extreme land-ownership fragmentation show that this phenomenon can be considered as a significant form of land degradation.     

An interval fuzzy chance-constrained programming model for sustainable urban land-use planning and land use policy analysis

In this study, an interval fuzzy chance-constrained land-use allocation (IFCC-LUA) model is developed for sustainable urban land-use planning management and land use policy analysis under uncertainty. This method is based on an integration of interval parameter programming (IPP), fuzzy flexible linear programming (FFLP) and chance-constrained programming (CCP) techniques. Complexities in land-use planning management system can be systematically reflected, thus applicability of the modeling process can be highly enhanced. The developed method is applied to planning land-use allocation practice in Nanjing city, China. The objective of the IFCC-LUA is maximizing net benefit from LUA system and the main constraints include investment constraints, land suitability constraints, water/power consumption constraints and wastewater/solid waste capacity constraints. Modeling results indicate that desired system benefit will be between [1.34, 1.74] × 10¹² yuan under the minimum violating probabilities; the optimized areas of commercial land, industrial land, agricultural land, transportation land, residential land, water land, green land, landfill land and unused land will be [290, 393] hm², [176, 238] hm², [3245, 4390] hm², [126, 170] hm², [49, 66] hm², [1241, 1679] hm², [102, 138] hm², [7, 10] hm² and [178, 241] hm². They can be used for generating decision alternatives and thus help decision makers identify desired land use policies under various system-reliability constraints of economic development requirement and environmental capacity of pollutant. Tradeoffs between system benefits and constraint violation risks can also be tackled.     

新一轮土地利用总体规划编制的调查研究--以浙江省为例

从总结浙江省上一轮土地利用总体规划的实施成效,分析规划存在的普遍性问题,提出新一轮规划修编的主要思路：宏观上采取“中间开花、两头延伸”的编制方法;开展“平衡中有不平衡、不平衡中存在平衡”的耕地总量动态平衡战略部署;以提高粮食综合生产能力为目标,拓展基本农田保护区内涵;开展土地更新调查;增强土地利用总体规划的弹性等。     

Impacts of land use and amenities on public transport use,urban planning and design

Various land-use configurations are known to have wide-ranging effects on the dynamics of and within other city components including the transportation system. In this work, we particularly focus on the complex relationship between land-use and transport offering an innovative approach to the problem by using land-use features at two differing levels of granularity (the more general land-use sector types and the more granular amenity structures) to evaluate their impact on public transit ridership in both time and space. To quantify the interdependencies, we explored three machine learning models and demonstrate that the decision tree model performs best in terms of overall performance—good predictive accuracy, generality, computational efficiency, and “interpretability”. Results also reveal that amenity-related features are better predictors than the more general ones, which suggests that high-resolution geo-information can provide more insights into the dependence of transit ridership on land-use. We then demonstrate how the developed framework can be applied to urban planning for transit-oriented development by exploring practicable scenarios based on Singapore's urban plan toward 2030, which includes the development of “regional centers” (RCs) across the city-state. Results show an initial increase in transit ridership as the amount of amenities is increased. This trend, on the other hand, eventually reverses (particularly during peak hours) with continued strategic increase in amenities; a tipping point at 55% increase is identified where ridership begins to decline and at 110%, the predicted ridership begins to fall below current levels. Our in-silico experiments support one of the medium-term land-use transport goals of stakeholders—to alleviate future strains in the transportation system of Singapore through the development of RCs. The model put forward can serve as a good foundation in building decision-support tools that can assist planners in better strategizing and planning land-use configurations, in particular the amenity resource distribution, to influence and shape public transportation demand.     

黑龙江省城市土地利用绩效评价及其时空变化特征分析

定量分析和评价城市土地利用绩效并确定其空间分布,有助于土地管理的宏观调控和土地资源的优化配置。本文以黑龙江省12个地级市建成区为研究区,从土地利用程度、土地利用效率、土地利用可持续性和土地管理四个方面构建城市土地利用绩效评价指标体系,运用熵权法确定权重,采用多目标综合评价法对2001~2012年黑龙江省12个城市土地利用绩效水平进行分析比较;并以评价结果为样本点,通过聚类分析得出黑龙江省城市土地利用绩效水平的空间分布特征。结果表明:2001~2012年,12个地级市的土地利用绩效水平呈不同变化趋势,总体绩效水平上升,根据评价结果将12个城市分为土地利用高绩效地区、中等绩效地区和低绩效地区三大类;在空间上,城市土地利用绩效水平整体呈现西高东低、南高北低的特征格局,各城市的土地利用绩效水平差距较明显。     

Spatio-temporal variances and risk evaluation of land finance in China at the provincial level from 1998 to 2017

Excessive dependence on land finance (hereafter LF) in China’s urbanisation process has generated various problems and compromised the interests of future generations, hence a transformation from “land urbanisation” to “population urbanisation” is now called for. Nevertheless, before turning towards a new urbanisation strategy, the spatio-temporal variances of LF and associated risks for regional sustainability deserve further investigation. This study developed a comprehensive evaluation indicator system from administrative, economic, social and ecological perspectives, to evaluate the LF risks at provincial scale in mainland China from 1998 to 2017, applying the combined AHP-Entropy method and Multi-Criteria analysis. The results indicated that land transfer dependence remained high across all provinces over the last two decades, and the LF risk increased accordingly. In 2015, economic, social, and total risks of China as a whole all reached a “high” risk level, ecological risk was at the level of “critical”, although administrative risk kept going down and was at a “low” risk level in recent years, thanks to the persistent nation-wide effort on cracking down on corruption. Spatially, total LF risk generally presented a declining gradient from east to west. Through analysing the tentative and plausible causes to above spatio-temporal variances, five policy suggestions were put forward: (1) reforming current cadre assessment and fiscal decentralisation systems; (2) transforming the residential housing supply structure; (3) establishing a comprehensive land ecological conservation system; (4) promoting a flexible leasehold mechanism in primary land market; and (5) restructuring the industrial layout to defuse differentiated LF risks across provinces. With empirical data and comprehensive risk evaluations, this study contributed to improve our knowledge on the spatio-temporal patterns of LF and its associated risks at provincial scale, helped to inform future urbanisation policy designs and ultimately to promote regional sustainability for China and beyond.     

The impact of land reallocation on technical efficiency: evidence from China

China's rural reforms expose farm households to an increased risk of administrative land reallocation and adjustment. This study explores the impact of land reallocation on technical efficiency, based on a panel data set from rural households in Zhejiang, Hubei, and Yunnan provinces between 1995 and 2002. Our research indicates that the development of a land rental market could serve as a substitute for administrative land reallocation in optimizing the distribution of land resources. The results from the stochastic frontier production function show that land reallocation does have effects on technical efficiency. The different signs for different provinces indicate that the impact of land reallocation on technical efficiency is an empirical issue and depends on the specific institutional settings and the overall economic environment in each province.     

Changes in and prospects for cultivated land use since the reform and opening up in China

Cultivated land provides the basic guarantee for food production and security, and changes in its utilization have been a focus of attention in China. Since China’s “reform and opening up,” major changes have taken place in the country’s social economy and cultivated land use. Based on statistical data analysis and literature review, this study systematically reviewed long-term changes in cultivated land use in China. On that basis, future trends are identified, which can provide new insights for future research on cultivated land use and protection management. The findings indicate that while cultivated land use is diversified, smallholder farmers still account for the main part. Further, the scale of cultivation is expanding but still fragmented, profits derived from land cultivation are slowly growing, and the proportion of those profits in total household income has dramatically declined. It was also found that the social security function of cultivated land has been weakened, cultivated land management has become more diversified, and grain output has risen steadily. To meet the needs of social and economic development, the government should promote the transfer of the “household” as a unit instead of “labor.” Moreover, innovation in the land use system should be stimulated based on industrial convergence, and policy incentives for ecological farming should be increased.     

Compliance of land cover changes with municipal land use planning: Evidence from the Lisbon metropolitan region (1990–2007)

In the past few decades, urbanisation has become a major phenomenon in European cities, thus representing one of the key human land cover changes with socio-economic and environmental impacts. In the Lisbon metropolitan region it is estimated that 17% of natural and farmland have been transformed into artificial areas. Since the end of 1990s, specific EU guidelines have been issued to contain urban sprawl and preserve agricultural land. Spatial planning in Portugal obviously is integrating these assumptions into the statutory land-use master plans. But what is the performance of this land use planning system regarding land cover evolution itself? Based on the Lisbon metropolitan region (LMR), one of the major areas of urban growth in Portugal, we examine spatio-temporal land cover patterns between 1990 and 2007 by integrating cross-matrix analysis, spatial metrics, and gradient analysis. Additionally, we overlay these land cover dynamics with municipal master plans that regulate land development in order to assess the compliance levels of this land-use regulatory system. Results indicate that: artificial areas are growing by coalescence and/or by scattered development along an urban–rural gradient; agricultural land is reducing and fragmentation is increasing to enlarge peri-urban spaces; there are high levels of conversion of agricultural land into urban land in protected areas, thus showing a lack of compliance to the land use regulatory system visible in the existing gaps between the original land-use assignments of the master plan and the actual developments.     

The incentives of China's urban land finance

Land grant premiums and land tax revenues have become two major sources of fiscal revenue for city governments in China. This type of fiscal revenue strategy for city governments is generally referred to as “land finance”, and it has drawn increasing research attention in recent years. This paper explores the institutional causes of the “land finance” strategy of city governments in China. We first analyze the institutional foundation of “land finance” (including China's urban land use system and land expropriation system). We then propose two hypotheses about the institutional causes of “land finance”. The first hypothesis is that the current system of fiscal decentralization is a major reason city governments choose the “land finance” fiscal strategy. The second hypothesis is that under the current personnel control system, which uses local economic performance as the most important indicator for evaluating local government officials, the competition between city governments to promote local economic growth is another major reason city governments choose the “land finance” fiscal strategy. We test the hypotheses by estimating econometric models using data for 31 provincial-level regions for the period 1999–2008. The empirical results suggest that fiscal decentralization and competition between city governments to promote economic growth are two major causes of “land finance”.     

构建建设用地配额交易制度研究——基于区域经济均衡发展视角

构建有利于区域经济均衡发展的建设用地配额交易制度,其基本思路是:在满足土地总体规划要求的条件下,土地主管部门确定建设用地总量编制目标和合法的建设用地使用配额,将这些配额按照公平与效益的原则分配给各地,并允许这种配额像商品那样买入卖出,以此来控制建设用地的使用。建设用地配额交易制度是借鉴碳排放等配额交易理论和思想设计的,推广施行此项制度,可促进区域经济的平衡发展,保护耕地、合理配置资源、减少"因公违法"现象的发生。推广施行此制度,应严控出售土地配额地区所得资金的使用,严格监控购买土地配额地区的耕地占补平衡政策的落实情况,依靠高新技术,落实领导责任。     

How feasible is regional integration for reconciling land use conflicts across the urban–rural interface? Evidence from Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei metropolitan region in China

Competition among different uses for land is becoming acute under the process of urbanization, and conflicts related to this competition are becoming more frequent and more complex. This article presents a methodology for confronting this issue. By applying an integrated framework, we explore the implicit role of the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Regional Integration (BRI) policy in land use conflicts by focusing on the urban-rural interface, and try to address the research question: “How feasible is BRI for reconciling land use conflicts across the urban-rural interface?” An original structure of the analysis is developed based on the identification of three types of conflicts, namely, conflicts over land use structure, conflicts over land conversion and conflicts over landscape pattern. According to the interactions and relationships among these conflicts, we define broad categories of land use conflict areas. Indeed, these conflicts are all related to the unplanned use of agricultural land reserves, which competes with other more immediate uses, and the over-exploitation of land resources caused by unsustainable urban practices. This policy is clearly a critical objective for optimizing the land use structure. It, however, fails to reconcile the conflicts over land conversion and landscape pattern, especially for considerable agricultural land conversion to non-agricultural uses, and low-density development pattern with mixed residential and industrial land uses. Hence, alternative strategies involving public participation, spatial equity, rural revitalization, land-use system reform, and new type of urbanization, can be identified as viable solutions for land use conflict management, which may be complementary to regional integration. The findings of our paper may also contribute to the policy debate on BRI concerning land use planning and regional sustainability.     

Monitoring land governance: Understanding roots and shoots

Despite a growing interest among land use policymakers to identify the indicators that measure changes in land tenure systems, little consensus exists about what framework can functionally analyze land tenure systems, and how it should be developed. The existing indicators have mainly focused on measuring the “effects” of land tenure (in)security and often neglected the “causes”. Hence, comprehensive monitoring of land tenure systems has been poorly understood and practiced. Given their multifaceted meanings, land and its related concepts have been a challenging issue for policymakers. Accordingly, the overall objective of this paper was to propose a functional and analytical framework on how to study monitoring land governance from roots to shoots through five main studies: i) understanding the historical trajectories of land, ii) recognizing institutional arrangements on land, iii) identifying land governance grammar, iv) defining land governance typology, and v) assessing land use changes. In line with this objective, the general research question of this study is how and by whom a monitoring system should be developed. Overall, this study can be considered as a conceptual framework that has been designed to conceptualize, develop, build, and apply a functional and analytical framework for formulating land governance grammar to explain how access to land is governed. Unlike previous studies, this study focuses on both causes and effects of strong land governance (SLG) and weak land governance (WLG). The paper discusses that land governance allows various stakeholders to participate in government decisions and ensures the security of their livelihoods. However, land governance could be either poor or strong depending on the government decision-making process. The paper also concluded that SLG is a precondition for economic growth and poverty alleviation in rural areas of developing countries.     

农地经营权流转价格扭曲的政府干预效应 ——基于边际价格理论的实证分析

研究目的：考察政府不同干预行为对农地经营权流转价格扭曲的影响效应,为完善农地生产要素配置及优化农地市场内外环境等提供政策建议。研究方法： Binary Logistic模型。研究结果：（1）当前农地经营权流转价格本应反映承包地利用产生的经济效益,由土地要素投入产出品的边际收益价值所决定;但受市场机制不完善、乡土伦理规范等多重影响,农地实际流转价格与要素价格间产生差异,表现为农地经营权流转价格扭曲。（2）政府不同的干预行为对农地经营权流转价格扭曲产生差异化效应。政府主导流转的直接干预模式会引起流转价格的高价扭曲,而通过构建流转交易平台、提供补贴等政策间接干预会缓解流转价格的低价扭曲。（3）对土地的经济诉求和保障诉求是造成流转价格扭曲的重要原因。研究结论：农地经营权流转价格的形成应交予市场,政府应避免直接干预造成价格的人为扭曲,可通过土地流转中介组织或补贴政策来间接培育优化农地市场交易环境。