Study area

This study focuses on the prefecture of Ankang, one of the three prefectures involved in the RSP, located in the southern province of Shaanxi at the northern base of the Daba Mountains and south of the Qinling Mountains on the upper stream of the Han River. This river is the largest tributary of the Yangtze River and is also the main water source for the middle route of the South-to-North Water Transfer Project, the largest water transfer project in the world (Fig. 1). 92.5% of the Ankang region is steeply mountainous, and prone to frequent natural disasters, such as flooding, landslides, debris flow, that result in severe economic losses every year. Farmland is very limited and accounted for only 21% of Ankang in 2010. Moreover, farmland with slope <15% accounted for only 41% of the total farmland in Ankang in 2010. Most of the farmland has low productivity due to low soil fertility. Sloping farmland contributes greatly to geological disasters and severe soil erosion. Ankang has historically been a disaster-prone area (mostly floods and landslides) and disaster relief and prevention are major concerns for local governments. Since 1980, the reasons for relocation have expanded to include poverty alleviation and environmental protection.

Ankang Prefecture (23 534 km²) in Shaanxi Province. The blue line between Ankang and Beijing in the China map is the Middle Route of the South-to-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP)

The Ankang prefecture typifies much of western China, with serious short-term conflicts between conservation and livelihood activities of the poor. With mountains covering most of the region, Ankang is not only an ecologically fragile area, but also a typically poor area. Nine of Ankang’s ten counties are states designated as poor or extremely poor; therefore, Ankang was designated as one of the 18 Nationally Contiguous Poor Areas by the central government at the National Poverty Alleviation Conference in November 2011. Restricted by the limitation of farmland as well as the eco-conservation policy of “send clean water to Beijing,” poverty alleviation is one of the great challenges for the local government. Among the 2.63 million permanent resident population of Ankang prefecture, people living below the poverty line account for one-third (354 USD per capita per y; 1 USD = 6.5 CNY in 2011, at the start of the RSP). The RSP is now underway to move 226 thousand rural households (876 thousand local residents) from very remote and steep mountainous areas of the Ankang prefecture to safer places with better access to public services (Fig. 2).

Scenes of the areas surveyed: a Road damaged by landslide; b, c Surveying rural household members in the original community. d New homes, with power lines and light poles in the background

There are several standards that determine eligibility for the RSP. Households or villages that meet the following criteria are eligible: (i) those threatened by geological disaster, flooding, or other natural disasters; (ii) those far away from the center of the administrative village, with poor infrastructure and production conditions, and low development potential; (iii) those that have small population size as well as low income; (iv) those located in a remote mountainous area with inconvenient transportation, such as being more than 5 km away from a main road; and (v) those located inside nature reserves, historic reservation areas, and ecologically fragile and sensitive areas. Households that meet the eligibility criteria described above can choose to relocate. They may select one of three relocation modes: relocation to an urban area, scattered relocation, or centralized relocation. Households that choose to relocate to an urban area are free to choose any urban area. In scattered relocation, households move to another rural area, depending on the willingness of the local population and the availability of land in the community in which they relocate. In centralized relocation, households within a village all move together to another location. The move to this new location depends on preferences of village residents and on the availability of land.