The Zhaoyang Project in Yunnan, China was established in to help small-scale farmers diversify their revenue and fight against land degradation. The mountainous North-East area of the province experienced large-scale deforestation due to farmland expansion.
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The project involves agroforestry, landscape restoration, and waste management activities. To help local communities adapt to climate change, this project regenerates degraded soils, mitigates drought, and rebuilds biodiversity-rich habitats, while also improving the livelihoods of farmers.
Zhaoyang Liu was awarded for his discussion paper | EfD
Dr Zhaoyang Liu, or Leo as he is called by most people, was given the prestigious Peter Berck&#;s Best Discussion Paper Award at the last day of EfD&#;s Annual Meeting. The paper focuses on methods of valuing water purification services of forests.
Forests help improve the water quality of the nearby cities. This means cost savings for those municipalities and Zhaoyang Liu&#;s study explains the benefits of saving forests.
&#;I&#;m very excited to get this award,&#; says Zhaoyang Liu.
&#;Efd is an internationally leading network in Environmental Economics and I&#;m very happy to get this recognition.&#;
Zhaoyang Liu is currently working as a university lecturer in Applied Economics at the Department of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge, where he also did his PhD.
He wrote this discussion paper while he was engaged in EfD&#;s collaborative program Ecosystems Services Accounting for Development and was he located at EfD China at that time. Zhaoyang stresses that the whole team at Ecosystems Services was very involved and helpful in the work with this discussion paper.
Link to zhaoyang
&#;I would especially like to thank Dr Juha Siikamäki and Prof Jintao Xu for their highly valuable input in the design and implementation of the study. My sincere appreciation also goes to Cyndy Berk and an anonymous reviewer from the EfD discussion paper series, who greatly helped me improve the quality of the paper.
He believes that one reason that this paper has received such recognition is that it focuses on a specific, straight forward contribution to the scientific literature.
&#;Working with EfD has shown to be highly valued, among others when I applied for work at the University of Glasgow, where I worked before, and now at Cambridge. Hopefully it will also speed up the process of having this paper published.&#;
Even though he is now working at the University of Cambridge he is hoping to have a lot of contacts and collaborations with EfD in the future.
&#;I certainly want to stay within the EfD family,&#; says the award winner.
By: Petra Hansson
The full name of the discussion paper is: Valuing water purification services of forests. A production function approach using panel data from China&#;s Sichuan Province.
You can read a short version here
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