Yaojie Wu

The relationship between the value of grassland ecological products and the distribution of regional benefits is key to realizing the value of ecological compensation. This study is based on an improved emergy ecological surplus model to identify the supply and demand regions for grassland ecological products, and constructs an emergy ecological product flow model to determine the flow volume and range of ecological products. Combining the regional economic level, an ecological compensation model is established to calculate the ecological compensation amount and compensation paths for the Qinghai-Tibet region. The results show that: (1) From 2014 to 2024, the supply and demand region ratio of grassland emergy ecological products in the Qinghai-Tibet region decreased from 12:3 to 9:6, with the demand region for emergy ecological products spreading outward from provincial capital cities. (2) From 2014 to 2024, the number of emergy ecological product flow paths in the Qinghai-Tibet region increased from 12 to 17, and the average emergy ecological product flow increased from 87.3 sej/m² to 122.3 sej/m². From the spatial distribution perspective, the flow of emergy ecological products shows a “west to east” characteristic. (3) From 2014 to 2024, the total amount of ecological compensation payments for grasslands in the Qinghai-Tibet region increased from 26.798 million yuan to 101.785 million yuan. The areas with higher payment amounts are mainly concentrated in provincial capitals across the Qinghai-Tibet region.

Chinese grassland ecological industry is at a critical stage of mid-term adjustment and development. Accurately assessing the benefits of grassland ecological product value conversion during its mid-term development can provide a reasonable basis for adjusting the future development path of ecological product value conversion. This study uses ecological efficiency, economic efficiency, and ecological function importance indicators as the evaluation foundation for the conversion of grassland ecological product value, constructing a three-dimensional evaluation matrix of “ecology-economy-importance” suitability. Under the logical framework of “conversion efficiency-suitability evaluation-path selection”, the study investigates the suitability evaluation and improvement paths of grassland ecological product value conversion during the mid-term development phase in China. The results show that (1) from 2008 to 2022, the overall suitability of grassland ecological product value conversion in China gradually improved, particularly from 2011 to 2021, when the suitability index increased from 4.99 to 6.33. The ecological conversion efficiency remained between 0.60 and 0.67, and the economic conversion efficiency increased from 0.44 to 0.67. (2) In the spatial dimension, the suitability of grassland ecological product value conversion is generally at the second or third suitability level, with certain regional differences. Moreover, ecological and economic conversion efficiencies are spatially inconsistent. (3) In the ecological and economic conversion of grassland ecological products, the highest redundancy rate in terms of industrial land resource investment is 36.7% and 42.40%, respectively. This indicates that the insufficient suitability level of grassland ecological product value conversion may be due to excessive redundancy in industrial land resource investment. (4) The improvement path for the suitability level of grassland ecological product conversion varies across provincial regions, but within provinces, there is a small-scale clustering of similar path choices. In the future, resource and policy allocation could lead to regionally coordinated development.