A Strategy on Eco-poverty Alleviation in Western China

Poverty problem is very common and serious in the west of China where the ecological environment is also very vulnerable.Although the poor region of western China has developed since the reform and opening up,the income gap between the west and the east continues to expand. At the same time,as the scale of poverty-stricken population decreased greatly in the past 30 years,the distribution of poverty stricken population is more and more concentrated to the west at present compared with the wide rural poverty distribution at the beginning of the reform and opening up,and ecological environmental conditions are becoming more and more important factors to induce poverty. Through analyzing the spatial overlap between fragile ecological environment areas,important ecofunction areas and poverty regions in western China,and the impacts of economic poverty on ecological environmen,this paper studies the coupling mechanism between poverty and ecological environment. On the basis of that,it analyzes some challenges in face of poverty alleviation in Western China at present,such as the contradiction between ecological protection and poverty reduction,low quality of labor forces,and very low of economic development level. The conception and the meaning of eco-poverty alleviation are proposed in this paper,i. e. to combine eco-construction and eco-protection with poverty alleviation. Two different eco-poverty alleviation models are designed according to local ecological and environmental conditions,which are local poverty alleviation model and afield poverty alleviation model. The contents and some successful examples of these two poverty alleviation models are analyzed in the paper. Local poverty alleviation model tries to increase poor people's income through local employment by creating eco-protection employment posts,developing local characteristic green industrial system,and to improve poverty stricken areas' production and living conditions by advancing whole village poverty reduction project and local education work to enhance the ability of out of poverty stably.Afield poverty alleviation model tries to make people out of poverty through moving people out of their original living places. It not only takes eco-migration as a mojor measure,but also focuses on leading labours in poverty stricken areas move to local cities,towns and east developed regions with urbanization development strategy. In the end,some policies,including improving human capital,developing eco-industries,and reforming institutions are suggested in order to implement eco-poverty alleviation strategy better.