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13,951,000 Yen (FY1997;4,217,000 Yen)
In Xinglonzhao district in Naiman Banner, Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region of China, they constructed wind protection forest to control desertification and to regenerate vegetation following comprehensive development plan phase I. Then, in phase II they planned to improve the conditions for farming and settlement in the protected area. However, only after one year from the beginning of phase II, they created phase III plan which requires seven times more investment than phase II plan. The intention of Naiman Banner government is to draw huge amount of investment from higher governments, but this kind of conduct reduces credibility in the feasibility of the plan. On the other hand, the reason behind this behavior is that in China, unlike in Japan, they have not established a system to grant subsidy and loan: in Japan higher governments grant subsidy or loan to a project as far as the project meets the minimum requirements that the higher governments specify. Because there is no such systematic way, each project plan is required to show originality and novelty. In this situation, it is difficult to present a realistic model plan, and there is little demand for it.
Consequently the figures of the input-output effect of the plan are quite arbitrary: there is no standard method to measure the effect. For example, in some cases they count only direct economic benefit. This causes low evaluation of the returns from investment in desertification control and low priority for the investment in such project under the constraint of budget. To avoid this, they should show a high expected return to the investment in desertification control project by including social and ecological benefits as a part of the returns to the investment. Hence we recommend to establish a nationally standardized measure to calculate the input-output effect.
Other problem we found is the increasing labor and material costs due to the recent economic development, which escalates the cost of desertification control project up to five to nine times higher than planned initially. Moreover, it is now difficult to rely on farmers' participation (including unpaid labor contribution) in the implementation of desertification control project, although farmers' participation is the main idea in the project plan.
Desertification Control, Comprehensive Development of Desertification Area, Input-Output Effect, Model Plan, Cost Sharing