Focus on Arts and Ecology

Experts question whether overseas assistance can make any difference to a cycle of failed projects and stalled ambitions. 

By Annie Banerji, April 20, 2026

India has one of the world’s longest coastlines, some of the most ambitious renewable energy targets, and a looming net zero deadline. Yet it does not have a single offshore wind turbine to show for years of effort.

Government figures hope this will change after India and the United Kingdom launched a taskforce in February, which they have dubbed a “trustforce”. It has been charged with developing an offshore wind ecosystem, supply chains and financing models.

Writing after the launch, India’s minister for new and renewable energy, Prahlad Joshi, said: “With the UK’s experience and India’s scale, this trustforce will deliver measurable outcomes for energy security and sustainable growth.”

The UK is a global leader in offshore wind energy, along with China, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. It hosts several of the world’s largest offshore wind farms, including the vast Dogger Bank and Hornsea sites. The country plans to triple capacity over the next decade, with a target of up to 50 gigawatts (GW) by 2030.

India, one of the top emitters of greenhouse gases globally, wants to build 500 GW of what it calls “non-fossil fuel based energy resources” by 2030. This target includes 30 GW of offshore wind capacity. India has also pledged to reduce its carbon emissions to net zero by 2070.

India had 272 GW of installed electricity capacity from non-fossil fuel sources as of February, including 141 GW of solar and 55 GW of onshore wind. But the country remains largely reliant on coal. As of 2023, 46% of India’s energy was supplied by coal and coal products, according to the International Energy Agency.

“As we move towards net zero, we will have no option but to go into offshore wind. We can’t do without it,” Bhupinder Singh Bhalla, India’s former renewable energy secretary, tells Dialogue Earth. “It is very important to start now, so that we develop our expertise, projects start happening, the ecosystem comes in.”

Failed auctions

Back in 2015, India launched a national attempt to harness offshore energy and unlock jobs and investment. It identified the areas offshore of Tamil Nadu in the south and Gujarat to the west as having over 70 GW of wind energy potential between them.

And yet, India has struggled to get a single project off the ground.

In 2024, the government offered 74.5 billion rupees (just over USD 800 million) in so-called viability gap funding (incentives to cover risks for developers) to support the industry. But the first tender, offered nearly a decade after this national push was first unveiled, failed to get bids as India shifted its focus to solar and onshore wind power.

India is not the first country to struggle with offshore wind. Installing farms requires large amounts of money, complex technology and dealing with the huge engineering challenges posed by harsh ocean conditions.

“[Offshore wind projects] rely on a complex ecosystem of seasoned developers bringing lessons from mature markets, specialised engineering contractors, robust supply chains and banks willing to shoulder risk,” noted the London-based energy think-tank Ember last year. “So far, this has proved elusive in India, which is why even the best-intentioned policies and auctions have failed to translate into active projects.”

Duttatreya Das, who co-authored that analysis, points to design flaws in India’s tenders. He explains to Dialogue Earth that the government fixed both the buying price and the subsidy it would offer, but those two together do not cover the actual cost of generating offshore wind power.

“The central government also has a limited kitty and has to balance across sectors,” Das adds. “So, there’s a gap, and if the cost of generation is significantly higher, no one [in the energy sector] wants to put in money from their own pocket to cover it.”

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has not responded to repeated requests for comment.

Bhalla, who led the ministry when the first tenders launched in February 2024, said the structure India came up with for its offshore plans “was not as attractive to investors as we assumed it would be”.

He points to several reasons for this failure: international developers were reluctant to take on the added risk of working in an unfamiliar market; India’s project timelines required completion within four years, against a global norm of six to eight; and the viability gap funding was not generous enough.

Bhalla, who has spent years working in government, adds it was likely the new taskforce is more a political deliverable after a bilateral meeting, rather than a considered policy initiative.

“That’s not necessarily wrong,” Bhalla says. “My only worry is how long it will take, and whether it gets converted to actionable projects. I do not want it to just exist on paper. There should be positive results out of this kind of taskforce.”

A dud Danish deal?

The UK deal is not the first time India has looked abroad for offshore wind help. In 2019, it signed an agreement with Denmark to develop the industry.

Das worked on that deal. The experience makes him sceptical of the India-UK taskforce, and of India’s wider offshore ambitions:

“The Denmark programme is the one that actually started discussions that led to tenders and to a lot of data collection and awareness around offshore wind. And even after all that, it did not work out. This, by comparison, is very superficial. I won’t be surprised if nothing translates into real action.”

Denmark continues to work with India on the technical aspects of offshore wind, but the initial, commercial aims of the partnership did not materialise, says Das. In February, the MNRE insisted the UK-India taskforce was not a “symbolic platform” but a “working mechanism” that would address real execution challenges.

Dialogue Earth consulted Ivan Savitsky, a senior manager of the offshore wind team at the environmental sustainability consultancy, Carbon Trust. He says the UK could help India with technical know-how on market design, and support India with risk allocation. He also says there may be opportunities for supply chain partnerships between UK and Indian companies.

The UK uses a two-stage auction process for offshore wind projects, which separates seabed leasing auctions from electricity generation auctions. The two stages are managed by separate authorities, the latter being the UK government, which secures the income stability for electricity providers that helps make these projects bankable.

“For new markets like India, an important lesson is to respect the level of maturity of the industry in an individual market,” Savitsky says. “The key learning, both from the successes and the challenges, is being flexible with policy and being reactive to actual industry conditions. For new markets, that’s especially important because there are different risks – new political risks, new local risks around project delivery, community engagement, and so on.”

A neighbour that solved the problem

The UK is second globally for installed offshore wind capacity. The leader, by a huge margin, is India’s neighbour and regional rival: China.

China’s immense domestic demand is fuelled by the government’s wind power targets, which have enabled a huge industry to grow. But while China leads the world in manufacturing, exports remain limited. European turbine makers are dominant beyond China, but the latter is aiming to increase its exports.

Despite political tension between the two nations – including a border dispute that flares into violence – China already sells wind power technology into India’s healthy onshore sector. Some Chinese firms even have local factories.

The Indian government has been pushing a “Make in India” agenda to boost domestic industries but remains heavily dependent on Chinese companies for many renewable technologies.

Is it worth it?

Ember’s Das wonders whether offshore wind is worth it for India, given solar energy is currently so affordable and easily scalable: “Why invest in a costlier solution when you have a cheaper alternative?”

He adds that offshore wind projects, which require everything from big ports and roads to underwater cables, could face further problems by disrupting local livelihoods and ecology. “I don’t think offshore wind will ever stand a chance in India in pure economic terms. It will never be cost-competitive.”

Others think offshore wind is not only worth the investment, but essential.

“To have a proper bouquet of energy sources, it’s good to have wind, which is a natural provider of grid stability: solar is the daytime; wind is typically evening and morning. So, they together allow maximum utilisation of the grid,” argues Bhalla.

He wants the government to rework its tender design to make it more attractive for international players, offering bigger projects and more funding:

“I am disappointed the ministry has not resolved this by now. It is not rocket science. You just sit with the industry and ask: what is the problem? Talk to them, revise the norms and come back. That should have happened already.”

In the decade since its national wind plan, India has not placed a single turbine offshore. Advocates say India cannot afford another decade of the same.

Annie Banerji

Bird-pond tourism is raising rural incomes and awareness of threatened species, but scientists say regulation is needed to manage ecological risks. 

By Mike Shanahan, April 21, 2026

In November 1989, Chinese farmer Hou Tiguo was hunting birds with a slingshot near his home in Baihualing, a remote village in subtropical Yunnan province, when a chance encounter changed his life.

He met two tourists from Taiwan who offered to pay him to show them wild birds. Hou accepted, and by the end of the day they had seen 160 bird species.

The tourists told Hou that if the villagers stopped hunting birds, many more people would come to see them. Birdwatching was almost unknown in China at that time. But word of Baihualing’s rich birdlife spread, visitors did begin to arrive, and Hou became one of the country’s first bird guides. For two decades, he supplemented his farming income by guiding, until he had an idea that would bring birdwatchers – and money – pouring into his community.

Hou had noticed birds visiting a puddle created by a leaky pipe. Using corn stalks, he built a crude shelter, barely big enough for two people, and began charging birdwatchers CNY 20 (USD 2.80) each to use it. ‘Hide-in-bird-pond’ tourism was born. Before long, Hou had created several artificial ponds, with more sophisticated and spacious hides. Other villagers followed his lead, transforming Baihualing’s economy.

Today, more than 250 hide-in-bird-ponds operate across China, with scope for many more – according to a new nationwide assessment. Its authors say they offer significant potential to boost rural incomes and protect biodiversity, but warn that unregulated growth could bring ecological and socioeconomic risks.

A new model of birdwatching

The set-up is simple. Operators provide shallow pools of water and food such as fruit or insect larvae. Birds arrive to feed, drink and bathe. Nearby, birdwatchers and photographers wait in camouflaged hides, often just metres away, for close-up views of the birds. At some sites, meals are delivered, so clients don’t need to leave.

“Whenever possible, we take our guests to bird hides,” says Summer Wong, who runs Summer Wong China Bird Tours which is based in Sichuan. “[Hides] allow them to observe certain target species that are otherwise very difficult to see in the wild, quickly and efficiently. Such wildlife-focused tourism provides a valuable source of income for local communities, encouraging them to protect the birds rather than hunt them.”

Baihualing was an ideal place for the model to take off. The village sits at 1,400 metres on the eastern slope of Gaoligong Mountain, part of a mountain range that has one of the world’s greatest concentrations of bird species. The village is a gateway to the forested slopes of the Gaoligongshan National Nature Reserve, an important area for biodiversity. Around Baihualing itself, 474 bird species have been documented.

Birdfinders, a UK-based tour company, says on its website that Baihualing’s ponds attract a “dazzling array” of birds, including laughing thrushes, scimitar babblers, sibias and minivets. “The views here are far superior to anything we could hope for along the trails,” it notes.

Baihualing’s boom

Before bird ponds, Baihualing was impoverished, with per-capita incomes of about CNY 3,000 (USD 430) in 2008. By the early 2020s, incomes had more than quadrupled. But as birdwatching took off, the number of ponds grew rapidly, reaching more than 70. A case study published in 2024 by Yunnan’s Department of Natural Resources describes how local authorities intervened to standardise operations and reduce pond numbers, leaving around two dozen higher-quality sites.

Today, thousands of birdwatchers visit Baihualing each year, stimulating a wider seasonal economy of guesthouses, restaurants, transport services and cultural activities. The case study estimated that tourism engaged a third of the village’s population and generated more than CNY 8 million (USD 1.1 million) in annual revenue, while also contributing to a reduction in poaching and indiscriminate logging.

A key innovation has been a village-level benefit-sharing system. Previously, tensions arose between farmers who wanted to clear forest for crops and bird pond operators who wanted trees left standing. Now, revenue from bird pond tickets – currently CNY 70 each (USD 9.8) – is distributed among bird pond owners and other groups of villagers, under an agreed formula.

“It unites all villagers to take collective actions to protect birds,” says Xinran Wang of the Shenzhen College of International Education, whose research on the Baihualing birdwatching industry was published in October 2025.

“Everyone has the incentive to remain in the organisation: bird pond owners can sustain their profits without obstacles from farmers; other villagers can receive extra dividends,” she told Dialogue Earth. “This formed a cycle to continuously bring positive effects.”

Baihualing’s trajectory underscores both the promise of bird-pond tourism – and the risks that emerge when expansion outpaces regulation.

A national phenomenon

Hide-in-bird-pond tourism has spread rapidly across China, often built around “star” bird species. In Yunnan, Shiti village entices visitors with three species of hornbills. In Qinling, Shaanxi province, birdwatchers flock to see the endangered crested ibis. In Mangba villag, Yunnan, a population of 300 Derbyan parakeets attracts many tourists. In December 2025, China Daily cited reporting by China Green Times that bird tourism there generates over CNY 4 million (USD 560,000) a year in the village of just 250 residents.

But the industry has grown organically, without national guidelines, formal oversight or science-based standards. Concerns include the possible ecological impacts of supplemental feeding and the risk of disease transmission, both among birds and between birds and people. A lack of comprehensive monitoring means it is impossible to tell if, overall, the bird ponds are positive or negative for biodiversity.

These gaps prompted Fei Wu of the Kunming Institute of Zoology and colleagues to undertake the first nationwide assessment of hide-in-bird-ponds, published in the March 2026 edition of Avian Research. By analysing online birdwatching forums, they identified 251 hide-in-bird-ponds across 24 provinces, and interviewed all 98 people operating them.

The assessment found that a total of 524 bird species – about one-third of China’s avifauna – have been recorded at these sites, including 152 species classified as threatened or protected. Most ponds (87%) are in economically deprived areas, and nearly three-quarters are within five kilometres of a national park or other protected area.

Wu and colleagues say this highlights the potential of bird-pond tourism to both address poverty and conserve biodiversity, particularly in regions “where ecological priorities and socioeconomic needs intersect.” With 40% of China’s hide-in-bird-ponds located in Yunnan, Wu’s team says there is considerable scope for expansion, especially in other areas with high bird diversity such as Guangxi, Guizhou, Inner Mongolia and Xizang.

Demand is also rising. The number of birdwatchers in China has grown from an estimated 600 in 2000 to 340,000 in 2023. As Wu and colleagues note, this is still less than 0.03% of China’s population.

Risks and regulation

“It is exciting to see this expansion in community-based avitourism in China facilitating connection with nature along with all its wellbeing benefits, and hopefully driving more pro-environmental behaviours among participants,” says Alexander Lees, Reader in Biodiversity at Manchester Metropolitan University. “The benefits for the birds themselves are less clear.”

Lees warns that a proliferation of feeding stations could increase disease transmission or raise predation risk. “It is unclear if these ventures lead to more substantial additional habitat protection,” he adds.

Xinran Wang’s research in Baihualing revealed that some bird pond owners lack knowledge of birds or attempt to discourage common species in favour of more profitable “star birds”. She also documented anecdotal accounts of some birds changing their behaviour or becoming desensitised to people.

“The most urgent step is formal legislation to ensure birds are safe while still leaving villagers some freedom to make profits,” says Wang. Training, she adds, could prevent unintentional harm caused by a lack of awareness.

Bird pond management relies largely on operator experience, says Wu. His team is now developing local standards for constructing and operating ponds and hides. They are also researching the ecological impacts of operations.

The researchers call for national standards and ethical guidelines, formal regulatory oversight with a registry of ponds, systematic monitoring and policy incentives to balance regional development. Without such measures, they warn, rapid and unstructured growth could undermine the principles of ecotourism and threaten the model’s sustainability.

The future of China’s bird-pond tourism, the scientists say, depends on turning grassroots innovations into a system with clear standards and safeguards. But Wu remains optimistic.

“I personally hold great confidence in the potential of hide-in-bird-pond to advance biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation efforts in China,” he told Dialogue Earth.

“The number of birdwatchers in China will continue to grow, the birdwatching market will expand, and the income of hide-in-bird-pond operators will gradually increase. This will incentivise operators to proactively protect birds and their habitats.”

One-third of projects may have gone ahead even without the credit revenue, new research reveals. 

By Christian Shepherd, April 21, 2026

Methane is behind around 30% of the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution. The largest share of emissions comes from agriculture, primarily livestock digestion and the decomposition of manure and other organic matter. In China, the energy sector is the largest source, with agriculture a close second.

Emissions offsets designed to curb farmyard methane via improved manure management used to be rare. Only about two projects were proposed per year in 2006 to 2021. Then interest surged. Around a hundred new projects applied for inclusion in markets between 2022 and 2024, according to public registries.

The vast majority of those were pig farms in China, which promised to replace open-air slurry pits with waste management systems that capture and reuse methane to produce heat, electricity or fertiliser.

Credits from these projects have been purchased by a wide range of global buyers, from major oil and gas giants such as Shell and China National Petroleum Corporation, to Chinese battery maker CATL and the University of Melbourne, the registriesshow.

But new research by CarbonPlan, a climate advocacy group based in California, found that nearly a third of the associated carbon credits may not deliver real climate benefits. The findings is part of a global trend of carbon offsets failing to live up to their billing, experts told Dialogue Earth.

Would the projects have happened anyway?

CarbonPlan’s analysis, which has yet to undergo peer review, hinges on the concept of “additionality.” It asks: would this have happened anyway? Projects that need credit revenues to be financially viable are considered additional. But projects that make operational changes because they deliver economic returns without credit revenues – or because such changes are required by local regulations or evolving industry standards – should be considered “non-additional” and excluded from markets.

Out of 74 pig farms in China that stated plans to use captured biogas to generate heat or electricity, 18 projects – or 31% of the potential annual supply of this kind of carbon credit – were “non-additional,” meaning estimated energy generation from biogas saved the farms enough money to make the project financially viable without credit revenue, according to the report.

CarbonPlan calculated their additionality threshold – by comparing self-reported project data on factors such as the number of pigs and heat output from burned biogas against energy cost estimates from the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s state planner.

Four researchers who track voluntary carbon markets or Chinese agricultural policies vouched for the general methodology.

Gold Standard, one of the two credit certifiers that verified the projects, said that it would carefully review CarbonPlan’s report and declined to comment on individual projects or project developers. “Additionality assessments are based on a comprehensive evaluation of financial, technical and operational factors, rather than any single indicator, such as energy self-sufficiency,” the organisation said in an emailed response to questions.

A spokesperson for the other credit certifier, Verra, said the organisation “will look into the specific projects if required” but that the report’s methodology was too broad for the conclusions drawn – applying provincial energy cost averages “across all farms in a province, without accounting for variability in farm size and configuration, fixed electricity costs,” and other project-specific factors.

The findings raise serious questions about widespread lapses in data reliability and quality-control by registries and third-party verifiers, said Grayson Badgley, a research scientist at CarbonPlan who co-authored the article.

“There is strong evidence of non-additionality throughout the carbon market – including renewable energy, forestry, cookstove, and now pig manure management projects,” Badgley said. “Absent serious reform, consumers should treat any environmental claim backed by offsets with scepticism.”

Voluntary carbon markets face credibility concerns

The findings come amid a global reckoning for the voluntary carbon market. Confidence in the value of offset credits has been undermined by widespread accusations of overstated emissions reductions, unverifiable climate claims and fraud. That loss of faith has intensified long-standing complaints of greenwashing by businesses who buy credits to avoid cutting their own emissions.

In 2024, a Dialogue Earth investigation into rice cultivation credits found little evidence of farmers using the advertised methane-curbing irrigation methods. That scandal has continued to reverberate through markets: Climate Home News reported in December that Verra compensated buyers of those bogus offsets with other junk credits.

Standard-setting agencies have tried to restore confidence with stricter quality control. Because methane has 27 to 30 times the atmosphere-warming potential of carbon dioxide over 100 years, methane projects were generally considered higher quality than scandal-plagued credits from forest conservation or rice paddy irrigation.

CarbonPlan’s analysis casts doubt on that assumption. Take, for example, a project comprising eight swine farms in southern Guangdong province. Certified by Gold Standard, the project has since 2021, seen over 700,000 credits issued based on annual emissions reductions of 423,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

CarbonPlan estimated that the biogas-fuelled generators involved in the project would produce enough electricity to meet all project needs, indicating it would likely have gone ahead without climate finance. The savings of nearly CNY 13 million (USD 2 million) per year were absent from financial statements.

Even using the most conservative assumptions, there remained “surprising inconsistencies” between the expected savings and what projects disclosed, the report’s authors wrote. These inconsistencies could be explained in part by shoddy paperwork or projects providing incomplete cost-benefit analyses to verifiers, but even so, the findings raise concerns about the verification process, they concluded.

Voluntary carbon markets that grew out of Kyoto Protocol mechanisms were meant to let buyers fund emissions cuts elsewhere to encourage the adoption of climate-friendly technologies and practices in places that might otherwise lack the finances or incentive to take action. But repeated scandals have increasingly undermined the market’s credibility.

Joseph Romm, a senior research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, who reviewed the research, said that CarbonPlan’s count looked conservative in light of his review of a growing body of research attesting to widespread overcrediting from multiple project types worldwide.

“It’s endemic and across the board,” Romm said. “The buyer and seller are both incentivised to exaggerate [the climate benefits of credits].”

The usual way to solve concerns of non-additionality is through more robust financial analysis that shows projects are not profitable without credit revenues, said Quirin Oberpriller, an associate partnerat INFRAS, an environmental consulting group based in Switzerland.

That means that the gaps in reporting identified by CarbonPlan are inherently problematic: It “doesn’t make sense” to claim to cut emissions by using biogas but not include the corresponding saving in energy cost in financial statements, Oberpriller said. “If this is the case, it is obviously flawed.”

Incentives, intended and unintended

While pig farms account for a relatively small portion of China’s total methane emissions compared to leakage from coal mines, improved manure management has been identified by the government as an important part of curbing output. In its 2023 methane control plan, the government set a goal of reusing over 85% of livestock manure by 2030.

The agriculture ministry has since at least the 2010s urged farms to implement manure treatment projects to curb water pollution and to reuse biogas, said Fred Gale, a former economist at the US Department of Agriculture. That long-standing push involved a series of subsidised demonstration projects designed to encourage the industry as a whole not to dump slurry in unlined, uncovered pits.

“Farms have been building manure collection or treatment facilities for years, before anyone heard of carbon credits,” Gale said. “I doubt a new farm would be approved without some manure utilisation facility.”

But there may be other drivers behind the sudden increase in farmyard methane credits from China. The uptick also came soon after a major overhaul in the country’s pig farming industry sparked by a severe outbreak of African swine fever in 2018 that resulted in about half of China’s total herd being culled.

Hundreds of backyard farms were closed, as the outbreak accelerated a state-led drive that favoured industrial-scale breeders with modern waste-management systems over smaller operations. Large-scale breeders invested in huge concrete barns that house hundreds of swine, often referred to as “pig hotels” in Chinese media. And the government significantly tightened environmental standards and launched crackdowns on polluting farms that flaunted waste-management rules.

Those regulatory pressures may have incentivised cash-strapped farmers to seek funding from the carbon markets for upgrades already encouraged by the state, Gale said.

At the same time, many breeders faced significant upfront costs from the construction of huge facilities. Many operated at a loss as they rebuilt herds. Soon afterward, the market over-corrected: farmers bred too many pigs, creating a supply glut that tanked prices and compounded cost pressures – a problem that has continued until today.

“It’s not clear that pig farms in China would have been able to scrape together the cash to build these projects – at that time, in that economic context – if it wasn’t for their ability to get offsets,” said Even Pay, a director at research firm Trivium China who reviewed CarbonPlan’s research.

While effective waste-management projects can pay for themselves over time – even without credits – Pay said it was possible that some Chinese pig breeders operating under extreme price volatility needed the additional incentive of credit revenue to adopt emissions-curbing practices.

China’s agricultural sector still lags behind energy and heavy industry when it comes to access to the financial, technical and policy support needed to prioritise emissions cuts, Pay said: “The sooner that a wide range of funding tools are available, the better.”

Christian Shepherd

Burning stubble in the fields had been largely banned since 1999, but local governments are now allowing the practice in some circumstances. 

By Liu Lican, April 15, 2026

China’s new Ecological and Environmental Code, approved on 12 March, includes a requirement for scientific and accurate “organisation and management of straw burning.”

Experts say this marks a shift from a fairly comprehensive ban, focused on air quality, towards balancing the needs of the environment and farmers. The move could be seen as an acknowledgement that the original policy harmed livelihoods while benefiting the environment.

For over 20 years, burning straw in China’s fields had been subject to a central government ban which was more strictly implemented in the north of the country. With considerable effort and cost, the practice was largely eliminated. But over the last two years, some local governments have begun relaxing the ban in certain conditions, such as when wind speed and rainfall are favourable for smoke dispersion.

The two-decade process – from a simple ban to a cautious relaxation – has seen policymakers respond to public concerns. As we will see, they have taken into account the use and availability of technology, carrot-and-stick approaches and trade-offs between the economy and the environment.

It represents a good example of the complexities of environmental governance in China.

From resource to waste: Straw needed no more

Straw in this context means the stalks left behind after the harvesting of crops including wheat, rice, corn, tubers, oil crops, cotton and sugar.

The practice of burning it in the fields is relatively new. For thousands of years, it had been a valuable resource used both domestically and commercially: as fodder for livestock and as fuel for heating and cooking, with the ashes then becoming fertiliser. It was also used as thatch, in bricks, to make brooms, as padding, and even in arts and crafts.

But from the 1990s, farmers started burning that once-useful resource in the fields.

Partly, this was because increasing food production meant more straw supply, just as demand was decreasing. Mechanisation led to less need for straw as fodder for working animals; coal and electricity were replacing straw for heating and cooking. Shifting straw out of the fields was a laborious and expensive process. With younger rural residents moving to the cities to find work and leaving behind only older workers, it was no longer possible to collect and process the straw during busy harvest periods. And in general, for farmers, the straw burning reduced pests and diseases for the next crop better than did working it back into the field.

The burning usually took place after the summer and autumn harvests – roughly in May or June, and then September to November. During harvest, crops need to be dried, sorted, packaged and stored, all within a week or two. Then the fields need to be prepared: straw dealt with, soil ploughed, fertiliser and pesticides applied, water and seeds added. Any hiccups, such as an untimely rain, can delay these processes. Dealing with the straw is one of the toughest and most time consuming of these tasks.

So, with mechanisation increasing, energy use changing, and less labour available in the fields, straw became a waste product which it made sense to burn.

The 1999 ban

The burning led to fires that got out of control, polluted the atmosphere and caused health problems. It also impeded transportation by reducing visibility, damaged soil structure and was unpleasant for residents.

Research published in 2025 gathered data from 156 city-level jurisdictions, covering the years 2015 to 2020. It found levels of atmospheric pollutants increased for three days after a straw burning incident. The ban has always been most strictly enforced in Beijing and nearby, but even then straw burning last June caused a spike in air pollution in Langfang, to Beijing’s south.

Beyond the smoke and ash affecting the eyes and respiratory system, substances in the smoke such as benzopyrene and dioxins can also cause cardiovascular disease and cancer. Research from 2020 found that every extra ten straw-burning locations within a 50 km radius of a county centre resulted in a 7.62% increase in levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution and a 1.56% rise in death rates.

In 1999, a national policy on straw burning and straw recycling was published. The Environmental Protection Bureau (now the Ministry of Ecology and Environment) was the lead authority behind the policy, with the ministries of agriculture and finance, and the road, rail and aviation authorities also involved. That the transportation authorities were involved shows this was never a simple matter of air pollution and public health.

The only areas specified in the ban were surrounding transport infrastructure: within 15 km of airports; 2 km of expressways, national highways and railways; and 1 km of provincial trunk roads. This suggests transportation safety was the main cause of the ban.

It was tightened up in 2008, as Beijing held the Olympic Games, with complete bans across Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, Anhui, Jiangsu and Liaoning. Roughly speaking, the closer you got to Beijing, the stricter the ban.

Although the straw-burning bans were implemented under an environmental banner, it has never been about air quality targets alone: there have always been more important aims for government, including traffic safety and major events.

The straw ban combo: punishments, enforcement, incentives

For over 20 years, central and local governments have been issuing rules and guidance on the burning, disposal and recycling of straw. Ultimately, implementation lies almost entirely in the hands of the grassroots: county-level environmental authorities and township and county cadres, for whom it is one more part of an already heavy workload.

About 10 years ago, Hebei had 80,000 township and over 600,000 village cadres participating in work to monitor and stop straw burning. In Heilongjiang, cadres from township chiefs to village officials are on 24-hour watch for straw burning during the two peak periods. If satellites detect straw burning, local governments in some regions can have CNY 100,000 (USD 15,000) deducted from their funding, so it’s a high-pressure time. According to a report from 2024, one county in Heilongjiang spent CNY 100,000 just on food and drink for the officials monitoring straw burning after the autumn harvest.

Local officials who fail to stop straw burning can face sanctions. Township and village officials can be called in to explain themselves; environmental bureau chiefs and township party secretaries can be suspended for investigation; while village party secretaries can lose their posts.

Punishments vary for those doing the actual straw burning. Hebei, for example, imposes fines of CNY 500 to 1,500. More terrifying, perhaps, are the slogans used to persuade people to obey the law: “Burn straw in the morning, do time in the evening” and “Set fire to the fields, and you’ll end up in jail”.

But alongside the stick of the ban, the government has always used the carrot of incentives. In 2022, central government provided straw-recycling subsidies to the tune of CNY 14 billion. They don’t just go to the farmers. They also fund the processing of straw and use of straw products, including the purchase of machinery, preferential power prices and transportation costs.

Yao Zonglu, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, says that in 2022 China produced 865 million tonnes of straw, 88% of which was recycled. Most is shredded and returned to the soil as fertiliser, either tilled into the earth or left on the surface. And much of the rest is removed and processed into fodder or burned as biofuel.

The 1999 straw-burning policy required recycling rates of 85% by 2005. A 2023 plan on continuing air quality improvements said rates were steady at 86%.

That means that even after nearly 25 years of strict controls, more than 10% of China’s straw is not being reused, and some of it is being burned. What has made farmers risk the legal and economic consequences?

Labour, costs, pests, disease

As mentioned, recycling straw from the fields is hard work. Moving straw from 3 mu (0.2 hectares) of land takes two strong workers three days. China, though, has a severe lack of agricultural labour, and most of those working in the fields are older or women. For many, there simply isn’t the time to do this when it needs to be done.

Even using the straw in situ as fertiliser adds two processes: shredding, then tilling the shredded straw back into the soil. Ten years ago, a China Agricultural University professor, Xie Guanghui, calculated that one mu of land earned about CNY 800, while inputs like seeds and fertiliser would cost CNY 200. Returning straw to the soil adds an extra CNY 100 in costs.

Such returning is also complex work. There are various ways of processing it, depending on what the original crop was, what will be planted next, and regional and soil conditions. Different machinery can be needed, with variable costs and timings.

Farmers often prefer to burn the straw as the potassium-rich ash is itself an excellent natural fertiliser. The main reason farmers oppose the ban, though, is that burning kills off pests and diseases. The prohibition led to a significant uptick in those problems. Keeping yields up has required increased use of fertiliser and other chemicals, which adds costs and goes against the original environmental aims of the ban. In effect, tackling an air pollution problem has worsened an agricultural chemical pollution problem.

Farmers aren’t opposed to recycling their straw – if it doesn’t add labour and other costs, if it doesn’t affect the next season’s crop, and if it doesn’t worsen pests and diseases. But while those issues remain unresolved, they still have motive to burn.

Local relaxation followed up at central level

In response to widespread calls for a relaxation, in 2023 the agriculture and environment ministries carried out a survey of the ban and straw recycling across eight provinces. That process concluded that the ban should continue but with a shift of emphasis to recycling and making straw more valuable.

Hunan, Guangxi and Yunnan had already allowed burning in certain cases. There was also partial evidence that air pollution might not be a problem: the city of Guigang in Guangxi allowed orderly straw burning for four years, yet saw air quality improve.

In 2024, several delegates attending the Two Sessions called for the ban to be adjusted, mostly because of pest and disease issues. Cao Xiaogeng, a delegate to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, had studied various locations and found that returning straw to the soil increases incidence of pests and diseases by 9.5%. A delegate also pointed out that long cold winters in the north-east mean straw does not decompose to fertilise the fields.

The 2025 version of the No. 1 Central Document – an annual statement of central government’s agricultural policy for the year ahead – offered support for straw recycling but also said the scope of the ban should be precise and in line with laws and regulations. The agriculture ministry’s interpretation was that this was to end the general nationwide ban on straw burning in favour of “limited” burning. Environmental capacity, soil conditions and agricultural characteristics would determine where burning could take place.

Also in 2025, Hunan ruled that straw affected by pests or disease could be burned in certain cases. Even the environment ministry’s official outlet described this as responding to public concerns and solving the problems caused by a general ban.

A less obvious problem than pests and diseases is the shrinking and aging of the agricultural workforce. This makes recycling straw more and more difficult and means local officials work exhausting schedules to stop burning, with overtime payments draining government coffers. The burning ban has been strictly enforced, but more recently some local governments have explored the permitting of limited burning, with a top-down relaxation finally coming in 2025.

The ban’s limits and negative outcomes

The ban has had considerable positive outcomes but, as mentioned, has been unable to get straw recycling rates past the 90% mark. And as straw burning is widely scattered and generally on a smaller scale, it is hard to manage centrally.

Are the costs of the ban, both in terms of government spending on enforcement and agricultural labour, now outstripping the benefits? More importantly, does the policy have negative outcomes, imposing costs?

A 2025 systematic review found that straw burning does not take place in isolation. It is the outcome of a combination of agricultural modernisation and structural, technological and socio-cultural factors. For the farmers, burning is the logical choice. When environmental requirements trump farmers’ needs, problems with labour shortages, costs and pests and diseases can arise. The policy has brought environmental benefits but led to hardships and losses for farmers.

As far as possible, policy should aim to benefit people without harming others. The implementation, debate and changes of the ban over the past two decades, and the shift from an general ban to a more limited and scientific approach, has given us a lesson, if late, on governance.