生态保护项目绩效评估的技术方法体系

自20世纪90年代以来,以各种形式的生态补偿政策和工程项目为代表的生态保护项目在全球广泛实施。1998年长江大洪水之后,我国也陆续实施了天然林保护工程、退耕还林还草工程、京津风沙源治理工程、森林生态效益补偿基金、退田还湖还湿工程、生态转移支付等一系列生态保护项目。近年来,政府、研究人员和社会各界越来越重视这些项目产生的生态、经济和社会效益。不过,我国生态保护项目绩效评估还处于起步阶段,主要体现在定量化不足、研究设计不严密、基准线选取不规范、评估方法过于简易、因果推理证据不足、评估结果可信度较差。不管是从学术研究、国家战略,还是实际生态管理的角度,都迫切需要推动和完善我国生态保护项目的绩效评估。结合过去十多年的理论和案例研究经验,对绩效评估的研究设计、基准线选取、评估方法、以及评估分析中面临的问题和挑战进行了系统地归纳与梳理,以期为进一步开展生态保护项目绩效评估提供技术参考。

Methodologies of impact evaluation for ecological protection programs

Since the 1990s, miscellaneous ecological protection programs, particularly ecological compensation policies and engineering projects have been implemented globally. Especially after the 1998 Yangtze River flood, China implemented a series of ecological compensation policies and engineering projects, including the Natural Forest Conservation Program, Grain to Green Program, Beijing-Tianjin Sandstorm Control Program, Forest Ecological Benefits Fund, Conversion of Croplands to Wetlands Program, and Ecological Transfer Project. Recently, government officials, researchers, and other stakeholders have been paying more and more attention to the ecological and socioeconomic outcomes of those ecological protection programs. Nevertheless, impact evaluation of ecological protection programs in China is only at its initial stage, mainly due to insufficient quantification, poor research design, unreasonable baseline selection, oversimplified evaluation methodology, weak causal inference, and poor credibility of evaluation results. Therefore, it is urgent to promote impact evaluation of ecological protection programs in China from both the academic and national strategic perspective. To achieve this goal, based on theoretic and empirical experience over the past decade, we synthesized problems and challenges on the impact evaluation of ecological protection programs, ranging from the research design, baseline establishment, and evaluation methods.