•We analyze the theoretical framework for land consolidation boosting poverty alleviation.•The mechanisms and paths behind land consolidation China’s poverty reduction are explored.•Land ...consolidation can help to promote rural development, increase farmers’ income and reduce poverty.•Land consolidation has social, economic and ecological benefits.•The third-party assessment of the whole process of land consolidation is urgently needed.
Regional impoverishment is an external manifestation of unbalanced human-land relationship in specific areas. The important role of the full utilization of land resources in alleviating the man-land contradiction has been gradually recognized. As one of the most prominent poverty-stricken countries in the world, China has been innovating the way of land use to alleviate poverty. Under the background of land system innovation, land consolidation is an instrument to alleviate poverty. This study first analyzed the mechanism and path behind land consolidation boosting poverty alleviation, then systematically reviewed the evolution of China’s land policies related to poverty alleviation since 1978, and finally explained the successful practice of land consolidation boosting poverty alleviation through a typical case study. Results show that land consolidation has multi-functional characteristics. Land consolidation has played an active role in increasing cultivated land area, promoting agricultural production scale, improving rural production conditions and living environment, alleviating ecological risk and supporting for rural development. It also helps to create employment opportunities, promote the capitalization of land resources, widen the way for farmers to increase their income, solve the predicament of lack of land, technology and funds faced by the development of poor areas and revitalize rural economy, thus contributing to rural development and poverty alleviation. Nevertheless, third-party assessment of the whole process of socio-economic and ecological impacts of land consolidation is still needed. Decision-making of land consolidation needs to take full account of different stakeholders’ interests and bottom-up participation is also necessary. These findings will provide beneficial reference for making-decision for sustainable land use and effective poverty alleviation in other developing countries.
•China’s dual land system restricts sustainable rural development.•Land consolidation coordinates the man-land relationship in rural China.•The transfer of land operation right for scale operation ...should be encouraged.•An expanded rural land market is needed to reverse rural hollowing problem.•Peasants' concern must be respected when implementing land consolidation.
The dual land system restricts the sustainable development of rural China which undergoes rapid depopulation and abandoned and inefficiently used land. The viewpoint paper reviews the typical rural land system and reflects the land consolidation project in a village community of Shandong Province. It indicates that land consolidation is needed to coordinate and improve the changing human-land relationship in rural China. Certain policy terms and stipulations could be set to encourage the transfer of peasant's land operation right and promote scale land operation. And, an expanded rural land market is needed to enhance the value of peasants’ residential land to reverse village hollowing problem. Finally, the paper highlights that rural land consolidation is a systematic project and should be implemented by respecting local stakeholders’ willingness and request.
•Constructed a tourism-driven rural spatial restructuring framework.•Tourism-driven rural spatial restructuring is the result of internal and external forces.•Land consolidation is highlighted as a ...direct way to trigger rural spatial restructuring.•Rural tourism can accelerate land consolidation and realize rural revitalization.•The driving factors of rural spatial restructuring are diverse at different stages, which including tourist market, government, enterprises, and local residents.
Rural spatial restructuring is regarded as an important method of achieving rural revitalization in China in recent years. With the spillover of leisure consumption demand in metropolitan areas, the rural spatial structure has undergone significant changes. To analyze the causal logic of rural spatial restructuring, this study constructs a tourism-driven rural spatial restructuring framework. Furthermore, GIS and participatory fieldwork are used to reveal the changing process of rural spatial restructuring. A case study of Qinggangshu Village shows that tourism-driven rural spatial restructuring is the result of internal and external forces, while land consolidation is highlighted as a direct way to trigger rural spatial restructuring, and rural tourism can accelerate land consolidation, and realize rural revitalization. However, for those villages without any resource endowment, simple land consolidation cannot improve the rural economy in a short period. Moreover, once rural spatial restructuring is completed, the rural economy and social culture will also be restructured. The framework demonstration results will provide a “road map” to rural spatial restructuring in metropolitan fringe areas and serve as a practical information resource for policy-makers. The driving factors of rural spatial restructuring are diverse at different stages. Therefore, the government should adopt a gradual management model, and systematically mobilize all forces to participate in rural construction to realize the sustainable development of rural areas.
•High farmland ownership fragmentation is classified as a cause of land degradation.•A typology of land degradation refers to 21 types and 37 causes.•An overview of consequences of high ownership ...fragmentation is presented.•Possibilities for remedying harmful effects are summarized.
Farmland ownership fragmentation is one of the important drivers of land-use changes. It is a process that in its extreme form can essentially limit land management sustainability. Based on a typology of land degradation and its causes, this process is here classified for the first time as an underlying cause which through tenure insecurity causes land degradation in five types (water erosion, wind erosion, soil compaction, reduction of organic matter, and nutrient depletion). A review of relevant literature enables the further presentation of a list of 21 types of land degradation and another extensive list of the 37 most common causes of land degradation. This work further presents an overview of harmful consequences of high farmland ownership fragmentation, and possibilities for remedying the effects. These possibilities consist of eliminating or mitigating those causes accelerating the fragmentation process, defragmenting current land ownership, and remedying the effects brought by this process.
The core objective of rural vitalization is to systemically establish a coupling pattern of various rural development elements including population, land and industry. As one of the prerequisites, ...land resources is required to be optimally allocated via land consolidation. Consequently, land consolidation contributes greatly to population agglomeration, industrial development and resources support under the context of combating rural decline. Based on the key elements affecting rural development, this paper elaborates the connotation of rural vitalization and land consolidation in the new era as well as their relationships. Furthermore, the paper analyzes the alternative paths for achieving rural vitalization via land consolidation, and discusses the future directions of land consolidation and rural vitalization. The conclusions are drawn as follows: (1) To cope with the loss and decline of the intrinsic elements in rural areas, rural vitalization is a development strategy aimed at realizing economic, political, cultural and ecological rejuvenation in rural area by reshaping socio-economic morphology and spatial pattern in rural territory. (2) From the perspective of rural vitalization, land consolidation is endowed with new connotation, which should not only target at activating the key elements of rural development, but also place emphasis on coordinating material space and spirit core as well as integrating the restructuring of the physical space and the rural governance system. (3) Land consolidation should be compatible with regional natural conditions and the current stage of socio-economic development. According to the principle of regional planning and classification strategy, the appropriate models and paths should be adopted to promote the benign interactions of population, land and industry based on engineering techniques and ecological means. (4) Under the background of national strategy of rural vitalization, it is necessary to reshape the value orientation of land consolidation based on a scientific understanding of urban-rural relations and rural territorial functions, coordinate land consolidation planning and rural vitalization planning under the unified spatial planning system, and explore the new model combining land consolidation and multifunctional agriculture.
Center Pivot Irrigation system (CPIs) is widely used in newly exploited arable land in sandy lands. These sandy lands are currently stable because of climate change and ecological restoration efforts ...since the beginning of the 21st century in northern China. The exploitation of these fixed sandy lands to arable land with CPIs may affect the soil wind erosion, yet it remains unknown. The temporal changes of CPIs and its effect on wind erosion module were analyzed and modeled from 2000 to 2020 in Mu-Us sandy land using satellite images and Revised Wind Erosion Equation (RWEQ). The establishment of CPIs started from 2010, boomed in 2015 and peaked in 2020. They were mainly transformed from woodland, grassland, and barren land near rivers in east and southeast, and from cropland in inter-dunes in west and southwest of Mu-Us sandy land. The temporal and spatial pattern of CPIs well aligns with the land consolidation and requisition-compensation balance policies. In most of the Mu-Us sandy land, the annual erosion module is <25 t ha−1 a−1. Despite great variation, the annual, Winter and Spring erosion module of the Mu-Us sandy land or in Otog Qian and Yuyang, the CPIs concentrated counties, all decreased during 2000–2019. Although, wind erosion module in CPIs was lower than the surrounding area, it increased in 2019 given the same climate conditions as in 2010. Our results suggest 1) the establishment of CPIs in Mu-Us sandy land greatly depends on the local policy and natural endowment, and 2) although the set-up of CPIs showed no impact on the wind erosion with CPIs accounting for <1 % of Mu-Us sandy land, post-harvest of CPIs should be carefully concerned to prevent soil wind erosion.
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•The establishment of center pivot irrigation exploded in 2015.•CPI were mainly transformed form woodland, grassland and barren land near rivers.•Annual and seasonal erosion module decreased during 2000–2019.•At present, CPI establishment have no impact on the soil erosion.
Land consolidation (LC), as an effective instrument to relieve rural land issues and promote rural sustainability, has already attracted the attention of the Chinese government and academia. Some ...Chinese scholars have proposed strategies to promote the development of LC by investigating cases in European countries and comparing them with that in China. However, the introduction of LC in Europe as a whole and China has not been done systematically from a comparative perspective. This paper aims to offer a broader view of the development of LC in China and Europe and identify points for improvement based on the current Chinese political system and European experience. Given the special sociocultural background of Europe, it has been divided into Central, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe in the comparison and analysis. The comparison of LC, therefore, was conducted from the aspects of historical background, political will, legislation, procedure, and public participation. This is the first attempt to compare LC between Europe as a whole and China in literature. It identifies reasons behind the differences between China and Europe, and considers possible lessons that China might learn from the experience of LC in Europe. Based on these, the paper puts forward some countermeasures and suggestions for the development of LC in China.
•The approaches of land consolidation between China and Europe are compared.•The five elements cover politics and technical perspectives are included in the comparison.•The possible lessons to be learned for policy improvement are recommended.
As an efficient toolkit to relieve and resolve rural issues, land consolidation (LC) has been suggested as a promising policy instrument for sustainable rural development. Villages are the most basic ...units of rural planning and development. However, few studies have examined and compared the relationships between LC and rural revitalization at the village level. Given the sophisticated experience of Eastern China in LC practices, this study, based on theoretical analysis of the relationship between land use and village revitalization, compared two Chinese villages in this region with distinct spatial locations from neighboring cities to analyze and reveal the mechanisms of LC in promoting local revitalization. The results show that under the combined effect of internal and external factors, LC programs have been successfully implemented in the two case villages, during which the interactive mechanism between various aspects, mainly involving industry, habitat, and governance, has been created to promote local revitalization. In the absence of changes in resource endowments, policy support and the efforts of local elites are the key factors for the success of LC in the two villages. However, due to different economic and socio-cultural conditions between the two villages, there are also differences in their revitalization mechanisms. Parts of the lessons learned from the case villages can be useful for villages with similar situations in plain areas. These findings can advance the understanding of how to promote LC for village development and serve as a reference point for other developing countries and regions with similar socio-cultural backgrounds eradicating poverty and revitalizing localities through LC.
•An analysis framework on the mechanism of land use in supporting the vitalization of rural communities is established.•The practices of land consolidation in two Chinese villages with distinct spatial locations from neighboring megacities are analyzed and compared.•The role of rural elites, policy support, and a combination of multiple methods are vital for the implementation of land consolidation in the two villages.•The key to the success of the two villages is to establish an interactive mechanism for the linkage development of various aspects based on land consolidation.
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