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Communities Forests

China’s Collective Forestlands

Contributions and Constraints

By Guangping Miao , R. Anders West - FEDRC, Forest Trends
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Collective forests form the majority of China’s forested area and have proven to be critical in maintaining the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of rural inhabitants, supplying wood and other forest products for China’s burgeoning demand, and providing critical environmental services. This paper describes the key policy and institutional dimensions of China’s collective forests and how collective forests are presented. The paper assesses the impacts and implications of critical national policies, including the National Forest Protection Program, the expansion of the public protected area system, the Forest Ecosystem Compensation Program, the system of taxes and fees, and the log-harvesting quota. It concludes with recommendations regarding policy reforms that would strengthen the collective forest sector and increase its contribution to poverty alleviation, rural development, and sustainable forest conservation.