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World Bank Forestry Development Project in China
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China-StateForestReform-Jintao-Xu_0.pdf
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Professor Jinato Xu, leading expert on Chinese forestry at Peking University
Reform of State Forest Management in Northeast China
CHALLENGE
The reform of state forest management has become a priority issue in Northeast China. Unlike the collective forest areas of Southern China, Northeast China's state forest enterprises (SFEs) have not been successfully transformed. A decline in timber productivity (due to overexploitation and degradation of forests) has been acompanied by economic stagnation and heavy fiscal obligations toward state forest enterprise workers, leaving SFEs highly dependent on subsidies and transfers.
APPROACH
Although the World Bank has been an important partner of the Chinese government in the forestry sector over the past 20 years (supporting over 3 million hectares of plantation establishment and over 1 million hectares of protected areas), its engagement on forestry policy reforms has been limited. With PROFOR support, the World Bank's East Asia and Pacific staff sought to inform policy and institutional reforms in key state forest management areas in Northeast China, to promote the transformation of practices toward economic viability, sustainable forest resource management, and local livelihood security.
The resulting study, State Forest Reform in Northeast China: Issues and options, was published as a Working Paper by PROFOR in October 2013.
Research for this study coincided with the Government's internal evaluation of the first phase of the Natural Forests Protection Program (1998-2010) and the formulation of the program's second phase.
The study drew on several background reports including: a historical review of forest management in the Northeast China by the State Forest Administration; an analysis of extensive data on forest resources and socio-economic conditions from two surveys conducted in 2005 and 2009 surveys by Jintao Xu and Xuemei Jiang; and a critical review of performance and lessons at existing pilot reform sites and state forest enterprises, by Yuehua Wang and Zhenbin Gu. The background papers were originally written in Chinese and shared at a workshop held in Beijing in May 2012. Several of the background papers are available in translation in the annexes of the document
MAIN FINDINGS
The study considers three options for institutional reform:
- the centralization of state forest management;
- the decentralization of local management responsibilities to the province;
- and a combination of the two, with clearly delineated functions and responsibilities.
Ultimately, whichever option is pursued requires current functions and control to be reallocated, and this issue remains divisive and politically sensitive.
The paper concludes by stressing the importance of consolidating stakeholders’ interests to create a common vision for the reform. The assessment of the ongoing pilot reforms will provide a solid foundation to evaluate options for moving forward, though the reforms will need to be set in the context of the wider challenges of social service provision, infrastructure development, and achieving an appropriate balance between resource extraction and protection. There is considerable scope for the northeastern forests to support the local and national economies, through timber extraction as well as diversified uses including tourism and nontimber forest products. Achieving this requires central government leadership to reform the current system and put in place the necessary institutional framework and incentive structures.
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Author : Professor Jinato Xu, leading expert on Chinese forestry at Peking University
Last Updated : 06-16-2024
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Sara J. Scherr, Ecoagricultural Partners; Michael T. Bennett, Peking University; Molly Loughney and Kerstin Canby, Forest Trends.
Mobilizing Ecosystem Service Payments in China
CHALLENGE
Across the world, the growing scarcity of ecosystem services has led to a flurry of conservation innovations over the past decade in the form of payment schemes and nascent markets for these services. The global economic value of ecosystem services is estimated in the trillions of dollars, though actual payments for protecting these services are developing unevenly around the globe.
While Latin America has experimented extensively with diverse types of systems, developments in Asia and in Africa have lagged behind, although there is a large pipeline of projects ready to be initiated by international development banks and funds.
Against this global backdrop, the Chinese government made extraordinary efforts in driving some of the largest public payment schemes for ecosystem services in the world. As of 2005, over RMB 50 billion had already been spent on the Sloping Land Conversion Program, and 7.2 million ha of cropland enrolled. The government also spent RMB 2 billion annually on the Forest Ecosystem Compensation Fund, which in 2005 covered 26 million ha of forest area across 11 provinces in China.
Given concerns about the effectiveness and financial sustainability of these efforts, policy circles debated how to improve these programs as well as how to explore and develop other market-based tools and regulatory innovations to better address China's environmental and development challenges.
APPROACH
To inform this growing debate, PROFOR supported the development of a report entitled "Developing Future Ecosystem Service Payments in China: Lessons Learned from International Experience". The China Council on International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED) Eco-compensation Taskforce asked Forest Trends to develop this report as a summary of the global experience in payments for ecosystem services (PES), emphasizing lessons of particular relevance to China.
MAIN FINDINGS
The key issues regarding the effectiveness and efficiency of PES programs are: the importance of policy, institutional and legal frameworks; improving the poverty reduction impacts of PES by engaging local communities in the process of negotiation, design and implementation; devising methods to improve targeting; and the need to engage the private sector in order to better capture the value of ecosystem services and to improve the financial sustainability of current and future PES programs by relieving the burden on public funds.
International experience also suggests that by bringing in local communities and governments more closely into all aspects and stages of PES design and implementation, China will be able to significantly improve equity and efficiency issues in current and future PES schemes, and work toward reconciling the dual goals of conservation and sustainable rural development.
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Author : Sara J. Scherr, Ecoagricultural Partners; Michael T. Bennett, Peking University; Molly Loughney and Kerstin Canby, Forest Trends.
Last Updated : 06-16-2024
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World Bank’s Research Department (Agricuture & Rural Development), under the auspices of the Department of Rural Forest Reform at the State Forestry Administration in China.
Impacts of China’s Forest Tenure Reform: Implications for Policy Makers
CHALLENGE
In an effort to combine economic and ecological benefits, China’s forest tenure reforms aimed to provide farmers with stronger incentives to manage and protect forest lands, invest in them, and allow their transfer to better uses. To do so, they aimed to establish individual management on some 100 million hectares of forest which provides a livelihood for more than 400 million individuals. Given their size and far-reaching nature, these reforms have often been described as China’s ‘third revolution’ after collectivization and adoption of the household responsibility system. Indeed, a number of countries have shown great interest in emulating China’s experience, arguably one of the largest reforms in this respect globally.
A careful evaluation of the decade-old reforms could hold valuable lessons for China’s efforts to fine-tune its legal and regulatory environment to maximize potential gains from these reforms, and to guide other countries that want to improve the way in which state forests are managed.
APPROACH
PROFOR is supporting the analysis of information collected in two large-scale surveys conducted in 2006-2007 and 2011. It is expected to provide up-to-date and policy relevant analysis of key aspects of China’s forest tenure reform, in particular (i) the impact of reforms on households’ livelihood strategies and investments ; (ii) the extent to which reforms allowed emergence of transparent and well-functioning markets for forest land to attain efficiently sized operations rather than excessive fragmentation or concentration; (iii) the nature and impact of collective action at the village level to effectively manage forests and provide local public goods; and (iv) determinants of households’ labor allocation and the extent to which local labor and credit markets function and allow households in forest-dependent villages to make the best use of their endowments.
RESULTS
This activity is ongoing. Results from the analysis will be available on this website and disseminated via working papers, workshop and conference presentations, and a seminar with policy makers in Beijing. You can follow us on twitter or join our mailing list for regular updates.
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Author : World Bank’s Research Department (Agricuture & Rural Development), under the auspices of the Department of Rural Forest Reform at the State Forestry Administration in China.
Last Updated : 06-15-2024
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Forest Economics Development Research Center (FEDRC), China
Developing Forest Policy Analytical Capacity in China
Building basic models of forest supply
CHALLENGE
China's forestry sector is in the process of transformation. A pattern of forest depletion has been reversed in China and replaced by the world's largest afforestation process. Centralized command and control of the sector is yielding to various forms of private, localized and frequently highly autonomous management arrangements. China is increasingly integrated into the world wood economy, becoming in a period of less than 10 years one of the world's largest importers of wood and wood products and an increasingly important exporter (and re-exporter) of wood products including pulp, paper and furniture.
Managing forest policy for this increasingly complex, sophisticated and market-driven sector is placing new challenges on Government authorities, which are increasingly hard pressed to ensure that reforms continue and succeed in environmental, economic and social terms. In particular, capacity to conduct modern economic analysis of possible policy reforms and initiatives with China, and within the State Forestry Administration (SFA) is seriously limited. The sector has been judged to be seriously lagging behind other sectors in such critical economic reform areas as taxation, regulation, land tenure and enterprise reform. As a result, there is a risk that future reforms will not be based on well-reasoned analysis. The Forest Economics Development Research Center (FEDRC) recognizes that it is stretched beyond its ability to provide the SFA and others quality economic analysis and has identified supply analysis as an area of particular capacity building need.
APPROACH
Building on the skills and interests of FEDRC, PROFOR helped provide well-justified advice and perspective on the impacts of alternative policy reforms and initiatives on the supply of forest goods and services, and helped institutionalize a stronger, collaborative and modern policy analysis capacity within the sector and the SFA.
This knowledge activity explored timber and forest supply from major components of the Chinese forestry sector (e.g. geographic regions and management arrangements, such as small farmer, communes and state forest farms) in relation to alternative policy and institutional options. Particularly important policy questions included timber and enterprise taxation, land tenure and regulatory and transport policies. A series of reports, studies and workshops for national and international audiences resulted, with recommendations for Chinese forest policy reforms related to topics such as timber taxation, licensing and regulation and land tenure.
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Author : Forest Economics Development Research Center (FEDRC), China
Last Updated : 06-15-2024
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Review%20on%20Sustainable%20Forest%20Management%20and%20Financing%20in%20China.pdf
Keywords
China: Sustainable Forest Management and Financing
PROGRAM SUMMARY
The objective of this activity is to improve the knowledge of the Chinese government on sustainable forest management so that China’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) can be achieved.
CHALLENGE
Forests rose to prominence in the 2015 Paris Agreement and in many countries’ policies on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), including China’s. Since 2015, the Chinese Government has included in its NDC a commitment to increase its forest stock volume by an estimated 4.5 billion cubic meters by 2030, compared to the 2005 level, and to enhance mechanisms and capacities to reduce climate change risks in forest management. However, China’s efforts are hampered by a number of challenges, including poor forest quality, low-production plantations with fragile forest ecosystems, unsustainable financing, and weak coordination between sectors. China’s NDC, therefore, presents an opportunity for the Chinese Government to shift focus from measures that promote bigger acreage to, instead, improve forest quality and enhance the benefits and poverty-reduction that forests bring to forest-dependent populations. However, in order to achieve the goals of China’s NDC, the Chinese Government must use a different approach in planning and implementation than what was done before.
APPROACH
This activity will review, assess and disseminate best practices from other forestry projects in order to extract replicable forest management models and financing mechanisms to inform China’s efforts. Recommendations will be made to the Chinese government regarding technical models, long-term financing mechanisms, multi-sector coordination for landscape management, and public and private partnerships for forest management. This effort aims to enhance the benefits of forests, including carbon sequestration capacity and tolerance to natural disasters, such as extreme climate, fire, and pest attacks. Specifically, this activity will provide analysis to the following:
- Close-to-nature forestry management
- Forest carbon financing
- Key government ecological afforestation and production operations
- Technical improvement and investment effectiveness of government programs
- Financing regimes
RESULTS
This activity is complete. The outcomes of this activity have been achieved.
- The knowledge generated from the ACA work has been taken into consideration in developing long-term National Forest Management Planning (NFMP), which promotes the long-term, mixed species and multifunction forest management. Based on the NFMP, the provincial and county level Forest Management Plans are developing their long-term forest management plans, which will put into the best practice national-wide.
- The knowledge generated from this work has also provided inputs to an IBRD forestry Program-for-Results operation titled as Forest Ecosystem Improvement in the Upper Reaches of Yangtze River Basin Program, which is under preparation and will be present to the Board for approval around December 2019.
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Last Updated : 06-15-2024
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United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification
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Authors/Partners
World Bank Latin America and Caribbean Region, Corporación Nacional Forestal (CONAF)
Chile: Forests, Trees and Conservation in Degraded Lands
CHALLENGE
Chile is one of the most developed countries in the southern hemisphere and relies heavily on its natural resource base for employment and exports. Yet, despite its natural assets and economic prowess, the country is plagued by serious land degradation problems including desertification, accelerated soil erosion, and forest degradation. In addition, climate change is exacerbating land degradation through changes in rainfall quantity and regimen, and the melting of glaciers, which are critical for the country’s water supply.
An astounding two-thirds of the national territory (48 million ha) are affected or threatened by desertification and drought (CONAF 2006). Of the 1.3 million people inhabiting these areas, about 60 percent live in poverty. The main causes of desertification and land degradation in Chile are due to overgrazing, farming on marginal lands without conservation practices, and over-exploitation or poor management of forests. In fact, about half of Chile’s 15.4 million ha of forests are already degraded. Forest degradation is advancing at about 77,000 ha annually, and occurs mainly in the southern forests, where fuelwood extraction is a major contributor to the problem. Despite this alarming situation, there is only an emerging awareness regarding the degradation issues, and the country has yet to make significant advances to counter land and forest degradation. Urgent steps are needed to align country policies and programs to tackle the problem, provide technical guidance to field workers and heighten awareness nationwide.
APPROACH
The main objective of this activity is to provide state-of-the-art knowledge to the Chilean Government and other stakeholders on best practices and guidance for restoration of degraded lands through forestry applications suitable in the Chilean context.
This knowledge activity supported by PROFOR would include:
- a review of the many pilots and ad hoc experiences in Chile to restore degraded lands through forestry (including economic, social and environmental benefits);
- an analysis of the investment returns of select experiences, to demonstrate that the reversal of land degradation, climate change mitigation and the generation of income can be achieved simultaneously under specific conditions;
- a projection of the carbon sequestration potential for afforestation and reforestation of degraded lands in appropriate areas throughout Chile;
- a proposal for a monitoring system that would track desertification and progress in remedial efforts to address land degradation;
- outreach and awareness building activities on the scope and impact of land degradation and remedial measures needed to slow its advance, especially those related to forests and trees.
RESULTS
This activity, approved in June 2011, is ongoing. Findings will be shared on this page when they become available. Follow us on twitter or join our mailing list for regular updates.
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Author : World Bank Latin America and Caribbean Region, Corporación Nacional Forestal (CONAF)
Last Updated : 06-15-2024
Forests: A Resource for Development
In May 2004, PROFOR sponsored a policy workshop "Forests: A Resource for Development" in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
The purpose of the workshop was to disseminate the experiences of recent forest sector reforms from other countries in Latin America and the world to policy-makers, legislators, academics, non-governmental organizations, private companies, and rural forest producers and their associations. The aim of the workshop was to aid the implementation of the new forest policy framework embodied in the proposed forest legislation by presenting successful experiences and lessons from decentralization of forest sector responsibilities.
Community forestry experiences from Guatemala, Mexico, Bolivia, and China were presented along with the new market context for forestry globally and from China, Central America, and several countries engaged in decentralization. The Honduran experience was presented by Dr. Jose Flores Rodas, a renowned forest specialist, and complemented by the participants' experience.
Forest Trends coordinated the selection, preparation, and presentation of case studies and lessons, and assisted the Rural Productivity and Forests Project (PBPR) in the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock and AFE-COHDEFOR, the National Forest Agency, in convening the workshop.
Discussion focused on four themes:
- global market trends and implications, including new markets for ecosystem services;
- community forestry enterprise experiences;
- lessons from decentralization;
- and designing more optimal policy and regulatory frameworks.
RESULTS
The participants endorsed a decentralized approach to forestry which gave greater roles and responsibilities (and resources) to municipal and community levels while targeting the role of government more clearly in forests with limited population and in enabling activities. A strong interest in community initiatives supported by tenure rights and capacity-building resources emerged in a number of different working group discussions. The historical instability of policies in the forest sector was seen as an important limitation to forest development, particularly given the lack of tenure security. Promising opportunities for partnering between rural producers and communities and a more vertically integrated and efficient private sector were seen as desireable and feasible to advance forestry in Honduras. There was a recognition that both private and community actors need to become smarter in pursuing their market advantages and that regulations need to play a supportive, rather than command and control role for which the state does not have the incentives or capacity. Participants observed that Honduras had started as a leader in community forestry approaches in the 1970s but had lost this edge in the ensuing decades.
The individual presentations and companion case studies from the workshop are available from the Forest Trends website: http://www.forest-trends.org/event.php?id=163
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Author : Forest Trends
Last Updated : 05-10-2024
