Grassland Ecological Compensation and Award Policy Introduces Third-Party Assessment Mechanism for the First Time
This year marks the final year of the first implementation cycle of the grassland compensation and award policy. Does the design of this policy actually fit the realities of grassland pastoral areas? How well has it been implemented? What results have been achieved, and what problems remain? Recently, the grassland compensation and award policy assessment symposium was held in Xining, Qinghai, and introduced a third-party assessment research mechanism for the first time.
Starting in 2013, with strong support from the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Agriculture commissioned 6 institutions - the Grassland Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the Chinese Grassland Society, Beijing Forestry University, Southwest Minzu University, the Inner Mongolia Grassland Survey and Planning Institute, and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Grassland Station - to carry out research on assessment of the grassland compensation and award policy in the Northeast and North China region, the central and eastern Inner Mongolia region, the arid region of Inner Mongolia-Gansu-Ningxia, the northern Xinjiang region, and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau region, respectively.
After more than two years, through multi-level surveys and studies at the county, township, and herder household levels, the assessment institutions ultimately produced a research report on the benefits of the grassland compensation and award policy. At the symposium, the 6 assessment institutions agreed that since the implementation of the grassland compensation and award policy, farmers and herders have shown a very high degree of recognition of the policy's implementation, and the grassland ecology in the implementation areas has improved markedly; however, problems also exist, such as relatively low subsidy standards, weak industrial development, and insufficient support capacity.
It is understood that the third-party assessment research mechanism transfers assessment work that was previously directly operated by grassland administrative departments to social institutions such as teaching, research, and technology extension bodies, achieving a separation of management and evaluation, weakening the administrative flavor of assessment, and making the results more objective and fair, as well as more scientific and credible.