Quantitative assessment of agricultural horizontal ecological compensation in China, from the perspective of virtual land and virtual water

A stable and complete agricultural horizontal ecological compensation (AHEC) is an essential means of reconciling agricultural ecosystem protection and regional development and is also the key to the sustainable use of agricultural water and land resources. Unlike previous methods of studying agricultural ecological compensation (AEC), this study analysed the direction and amount of net transfer of agricultural land and water use along with inter-provincial trade. In conjunction with the value of ecosystem services embedded in agricultural land and water resources, this study calculated AHEC standards and estimated payments/reimbursements from each province. We found that agricultural land and water resources continued to flow from the underdeveloped inland provinces to the developed coastal provinces in 2017. In addition, the value of agricultural ecosystem in the central and coastal areas can be further enhanced by reducing the negative value of their cropland. Even though the ecological compensation standards for virtual agricultural water use (AWU) was much lower than the ecological compensation standards for virtual agricultural land use (ALU), the integrated AHEC in 31 provinces was more reasonable than considering only virtual ALU and virtual AWU. These findings are of great theoretical and application significance for the government to establish a systematic and feasible framework for inter-provincial AHEC and serve as a reference for other countries to conduct related research.