Land use and land cover changes and fanner vulnerability in Xishuangbanna prefecture in southwestern China

Xishuangbanna, located in southwest China neighboring Laos and Myanmar, is a biologically diverse region that covers only 0.2% of the land area of China, yet contains 25% of all plant species in the entire country. Over the last decades, forest cover in this area has decreased dramatically from 63% to 34%. Previously, cleared lands have been largely converted into rubber plantations. The valleys have a tropical monsoon climate and the hills are subtropical. The study combined remote sensing analyses with secondary data and in-field interviews in order to understand the coupling between land use and land cover changes, and farmer vulnerability in light of the geographic, historical, and sociopolitical situation. This project integrated the development of socioeconomic and spatial databases with information collected through household interview, land use and land cover mapping, and policy reviews. After interpretation, the overlays were digitized and registered to the UTM coordinate system and WGS 84 datum using 60 control points obtained from the 1:50,000 scale topographic maps. The digitized land units were attributed in the GIS according to the six classes assigned during the interpretation. Through an analysis of the sociopolitical situation, this study has shown how upland resources, people, and space are dominated by the state and by lowland-based monoculture-cropping technologies. Furthermore, the greater part of benefits derived from the exploitation of mountain resources flowed down to lowland economies and political centers. Challenges exist for both state and lowland institutions to design policies and marketing systems that are more transparent for indigenous people and that are more supportive of indigenous knowledge, cultures, and livelihoods. This can be achieved through decentralized state policies, transparent markets, capacity building, and participatory land use planning at local and watershed levels. Capacity building for indigenous people to enable them to cope with environmental variability and socioeconomic changes can be achieved through endowment, empowerment, entitlement, and enfranchisement. These provide a counterbalance to the ongoing political-economic processes that produce vulnerability. Land use and land cover changes can serve as an indicator of the political-economic causes of environmental change and vulnerability.