Assessment of China's economic loss resulting from the degradation of agricultural land in the end of 20th century

Article type: Research Article

Authors: HAO, Fang-hua | CHANG, Ying | NING, Da-tong

Affiliations: Institute of Environmental Sciences, State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China

Note: [] Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: Land degradation is a consequence stemming from both natural processes and social economic activities. On the bases of analyzing general situation of agricultural land degradation in China, the monetary estimating methods such as market value method and shadow engineering method were used to quantitatively assess the economic loss resulting from land deterioration. Results showed that the economic loss in 1999 was 326.81 billion RMB Yuan, which accounted for 4.1% of GDP in the same year of China. If taking five items namely farmland conversion, soil erosion, salinization, decline in reservoir functions, and siltation in waterways and, comparing withthat in 1992, the percentage of economic loss to GDP has increased by 1.5 in the only 7 years.

Keywords: agricultural land, degradation, economic loss, estimating method , China

Journal: Journal of Environmental Sciences, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 199-203, 2004