The Varying Roles of Ecosystem Services in Poverty Alleviation Among Rural Households in Urbanizing Watersheds

Abstract ContextUnderstanding the relationship between ecosystem services and human well-being in rural areas of rapidly urbanizing watersheds is one of the core research questions of landscape sustainability science. It is important for poverty alleviation and forming related policies. However, there is insufficient investigation on the impact of ecosystem services on poverty alleviation at the household level in such regions. ObjectivesThis paper investigates whether household characteristics play an important role in connecting ecosystem services and poverty alleviation in a rapidly urbanizing landscape from the perspective of landscape sustainability science.MethodsWe use an urbanizing watershed with a large number of poor people, analyzing the impacts of ecosystem services on poverty alleviation among different types of rural households based on surveys, cluster analysis, and multinomial logit models. ResultsThe results suggested that neither provisioning services nor cultural services that are received by the households were significantly associated with poverty alleviation (p>0.1). However, the decline in one regulating service (natural disaster prevention) had a significant, negative impact on poverty alleviation (p<0.1), and the probability for natural disaster-affected farmers to fall into poverty was approximately 32 times higher than that for those who were not. ConclusionsDifferences in household-level endowments largely explained the diverging roles of ecosystem services on poverty alleviation. Therefore, in urbanizing watersheds, pro-poor policies such as providing agricultural insurance and targeted support (e.g., interest-free microcredit) should be adopted to improve the ability of poverty-stricken households to cope with disasters and prevent them from returning to poverty.