Ecosystem Restoration in Smallholder Settings : Lessons from China’s Grain for Green Program

Overview & Synopsis

Land degradation threatens rural livelihoods across the developing world. Large-scale ecosystem restoration programs offer a way out, yet they remain poorly understood in terms of their socioeconomic effects and transferable lessons. China’s Grain for Green (GforG) program, which was also called the Returning Farmland to Forests Program in the official documents, launched in 1999, offers an extensive evidence base on government-led smallholder land retirement at scale in low-and-middle income countries. By 2020, the program had converted approximately 14 million hectares of sloping cropland to forest or grassland across 25 provinces, compensating 41 million rural households at a cumulative central government investment exceeding USD 77.62 billion. Total program area, including restoration of non-cropland areas, reached approximately 34.33 million hectares. This paper synthesizes evidence on the GforG’s design, implementation, and outcomes to distill transferable lessons for smallholder land restoration programs, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.