UBC Wiki - User contributions [en]

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2022-01-03T08:02:14Z

YIXUANYU: Undo revision 640122 by YIXUANYU (talk)

This case study examines the community-based forest management and the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Wuping county, Longyan city, Fujian province, China. It uses various documents to develop a timeline about how Jiewen village, the first experimental unit in Fujian, makes great achievements of the collective forest tenure reform. The village chief, the village council, the local communities, the local governments, and the state governments cooperate tightly to clarify forest rights for the community including forestland ownership, management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct. With the description of different stakeholders, the case study discusses and assesses the achievements and deficiencies of the collective forest tenure reform and collective forest management by Jiewen’s people. Meanwhile, the under-forest economy will also be discussed in this case study. Some recommendations will also be attached at last.

== Description ==
[[File:ChinaFujianLongyan.png|thumb|Longyan, Fujian, China. via [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ChinaFujianLongyan.png Wikimedia Commons]. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:public_domain Public Domain].
]]

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town<ref name=":0">Jiewencun. 2018, May 1. In ''Baidubaike''. Retrieved October 22, 2018, from <nowiki>https://baike.baidu.com/item</nowiki>. </ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita<ref name=":0" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting, marketing timber products, and under-forest economy for better livelihoods of the community. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistributed the collective forests and clarified forest rights for villagers. Compared with other places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four significant changes<ref name=":1">Zhao, P. (2017). 武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County]. Retrieved October 28, 2018, from <nowiki>http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html</nowiki>.</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes<ref>Menzies, N. K. (2007). ''Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.'' New York: Columbia University Press. </ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime<ref name=":2">Lu, W., Landell-Mills, N., Liu, J., Xu, J., Liu, C. (2002). Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China. London: International Institute for Environment and Development. <nowiki>https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting</nowiki>. </ref>, People’s Communes disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on some issues concerning forest protection and forestry development"<ref>State Forestry Administration. (1981).关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on several issues concerning the protection of forest and development of forestry]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx</nowiki>?. </ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of the forest is collectively owned, and 14% is reserved for the state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are divided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a specific piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management<ref name=":2" />.

However, the unified management of collective forests continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, and then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the collective community income, as a result of which the farmers do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department was sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017) mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100<ref name=":1" />. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide industrial materials was decreased from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory<ref name=":1" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in the 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as the establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state-owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.”<ref>Xie, Y., Gong, P., Han, X., & Wen, Y. (2014). The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity? ''Journal of forest economics, 20''(2), 126-140. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001</nowiki>.</ref>
== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017), he interviewed Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform<ref name=":3">Li, X. (2017). “林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]. Retrieved from <nowiki>https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707</nowiki>.</ref>. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is a villager whose subsistence entirely rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X<ref name=":3" />.
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In the 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers tough to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to be at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X<ref name=":3" />.
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which seven were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X<ref name=":3" />.

=== A Favorable Turn - The Customary Forest Rights Through The Local Forestry Management ===
[[File:龙岩市 - City of Longyan - 2016.09 - panoramio.jpg|thumb|
City of Longyan. By [https://www.panoramio.com/user/5226993?with_photo_id=133874413 rheins] via [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E9%BE%99%E5%B2%A9%E5%B8%82_-_City_of_Longyan_-_2016.09_-_panoramio.jpg Wikimedia Commons]. [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en CC BY 3.0].
]]
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

In order to start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there were no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businesspeople. Therefore, FDFP required the village first to average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X<ref name=":3" />.
Eventually, the Village Council divided the collective forests into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, making sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, Li Guilin received the first new forest certificate, in which the forest ownership and a bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct were clarified.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X<ref name=":3" />.
There were 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village<ref name=":3" />. Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village Council and villagers came with consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through a paid-use system in the condition of constant usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy<ref name=":4">Zhou, J. (2009). 武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价[Analyze the mode of the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village]. ''Green finance and accounting, 4,'' 40-41. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004</nowiki>.</ref>.
# Villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or the future have the property rights. The group of people does not need to pay fees to the village council.
# The Village Council charges villagers if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in the village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016) defined that the under-forest economy is to improve the overall utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development<ref name=":5">Lin, C. (2016). 武平县林下经济发展状况研究[Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County]. ''现代商贸工业, 34'', 50-51. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026</nowiki>.</ref>. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below<ref name=":5" />:
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013<ref name=":5" />, the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan<ref name=":5" />.

==Stakeholders Analysis ==
Based on the development of the collective forests in Jiewen, the power and interest levels for stakeholders are listed below.
{| class="wikitable"
!High power
Low interest
!High power
High interest
|-
|
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''
|
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
|-
!Low power
High interest
!Low power
Low interest
|-
|
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop the under-forest economy'''

* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
|
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''Foresters'''
|}

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the state government recognized the collective forest tenure reform, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people is entitled to the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since Jiewen's people collectively own the forests, households do not have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected from different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they do not only serve for the higher level of authorities but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, the village chief is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
The groups of people listed below are not directly affected by the collective forest management in Jiewen, but play indispensable roles in the entire process.
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

== Discussion & Assessment ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village<ref name=":4" />.

First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in the new model of the collective forest management, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period.

Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degradation and boosted the community forest security.

Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders. The under-forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform. It provides new opportunities and great potential for the development of collective forestry in Jiewen.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis, and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. In the same year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council enacted the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development as a beginning of paying attention to the collective forest system. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country in 2008 through the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform<ref>Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council. (2008). 中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见[Opinions on comprehensively promoting the collective forest tenure reform]. Retrieved from http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html. </ref>. It displayed a similar structure with Jiewen's model which can be summarized as the redistribution of the forest ownership, the management rights, the disposal rights and the usufruct<ref>Zhang, X., Xie, Y., Wen, Y., & Li, H. (2011). Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China. ''World forestry research, 24''(2), 64–69. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212</nowiki>.</ref>.

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China<ref>State Forestry Administration. (2014). General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived from <nowiki>http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html</nowiki>.</ref>, about 60% of the forests in China are collectively owned, and the rest are state-owned. However, the proportion of forest stock by the collective forests are just around 37%, weighing much less than the state forests compared to the forest ownership match ratio. It shows that the quality of the collective forests needs improve in an extended period.

Following the criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen and other communities still need to confront with difficulties of collective forest co-management. The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results<ref>State Forestry Administration. (2014). The eighth national forest resource inventory results. Beijing: The forest resource management, pp. 1-2. <nowiki>http://doi.org/10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001</nowiki>. </ref> shows that the problem of deforestation in some areas is still severe with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization. It illustrates that some communities have not realized the essential of the under-forest economy which benefits the socio-economic development and forest resources conservation. Combined with current situation, China has a really top-down political system. Mostly, if the highest government make a decision, the lower level administrations have to follow the order. It forms an efficient system to promote the policies but reversely lead to lacking the involvement of people in the bottom.

On the other hand, the unclear concept of the forest rights still causes issues. Accoring to L. Zhang (2010)<ref name=":6">Zhang, L. (2010). Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights]. ''Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition), 10''(1), 87-92. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015</nowiki>. </ref>, there is no completed and specific enactment concerning the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism. As a core in forestry, the forest rights should be a legal concept while it is more often used with unclear directions in a policy term<ref name=":6" />. Meanwhile, the legal rationality is also insufficient, current series of logical problems. To some extent, these have led to enormous obstacles to the connection between China's forest tenure reform policy and relevant legislation. Based on the current practice, the forest right can be defined as a limited concept targeting the utilization right and the usufruct of forests.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers: Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the community-based collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming, and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches to eveloping new forms of forestry economy.

* Village council: Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique. They also need to consider a scheduled timetable for the regulated meeting.
* Foresters: Gain advanced knowledge and technology for improving the quality and quantity of the collective forests.

* Local governments: Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

* Forest Departments: Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

* State Government: Strengthen legislation system for forest rights. Reduce the taxes and fees for the communities in forestry developement.

== References ==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=Yu Yixuan (Joyce)
|share=yes
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2021-05-11T12:51:47Z

YIXUANYU: currently not available

---

== Description ==
[[File:ChinaFujianLongyan.png|thumb|Longyan, Fujian, China. via [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ChinaFujianLongyan.png Wikimedia Commons]. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:public_domain Public Domain].
]]

---

== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village ==
---

==Stakeholders Analysis ==
---

== Discussion & Assessment ==
---<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=Yu Yixuan (Joyce)
|share=yes
}}

Course:CONS200/2019/Ecological Benefits and Costs of China's Green Great Wall

2019-04-03T19:13:59Z

YIXUANYU: /* Recommendations */

[[File:Map_of_Green_Great_Wall_in_China.jpg|thumb|421x421px|Location of Green Great Wall in China]]
Green Great Wall, or Three-North Shelter Forest Program, or Three-North Shelterbelt Program, is a sequence of artificial shelter forests in northwestern, northeastern, and northeastern regions of China<ref name=":2">Meng, F. (2014). The Significance and Role of the Green Great Wall Construction. New Countryside: ''Heilongjiang''(8), 305-305. doi:10.3969/j.issn.1674-8409.2014.08.305 </ref>. It starts ranging from Binxian County in Heilongjiang Province in the east to Wusongbeili Mountain in Xinjiang in the west, and from the northern border in the north to Hai River, Yongding River, Wei River and Tao River, Burhan Budai Mountain<ref name=":2" />. The construction of the Green Great Wall covers 551 counties (flags, cities, and districts) in 13 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government) with a total area of 4.069 million hectares, accounting for 42.4% of the country's land area<ref name=":2" />. Among these aras, there are 12 Gobi, deserts and sand lands with an area of 133,000 km, as well as 0.367 million hectares Loess Plateau that has severe soil erosion, sparse vegetation and lots of gullies<ref name=":2" />.

The project began in 1979 and its planning period is 70 years<ref name=":1">Three-North Shelterbelt Program. (2019). In ''Baidupedia''. The Great Wall Project. Retrieved on February 11, 2019, from https://baike.baidu.com/item/“三北”防护林工/11046362?fromtitle=%E4%B8%89%E5%8C%97%E9%98%B2%E6%8A%A4%E6%9E%97&fromid=1845823#reference-%5B4%5D-695089-wrap </ref>. By 2050, the planned afforestation area will be 535 million hectares, and the forest coverage rate in these three regions will increase from 5.05% in 1979 to 15.95% in 2050<ref name=":1" />. Until 2018, the afforestation area has been completed to 30.149 million hectares, and the forest coverage rate of the project area has increased to 13.59%<ref name=":1" />. At present, China’s Green Great Wall has gained great ecological achievement but has generated a great number of financial costs. Meanwhile, various problems have emerged and impeded the project to proceed, in terms of ecology, finance, policy, and society. Those existing problems will be discussed, and recommendations that correspond with different aspects will be suggested.
[[File:Three_North_Shelter_Forest_Program_in_northern_China.png|thumb|455x455px|Green Great Wall in northern China in detail]]

== Background ==
[[File:Green_Great_Wall.jpg|thumb|440x440px|Green Great Wall in Pinglu Qipan Mountains]]
China is one of the biggest countries in the world, covering approximately 9,600,000 square kilometers, with diverse climate types and varied terrains. With the ever-accelerated development, the formation of ecological problems was facilitated to some extent, especially where ecological conditions are fragile. The Green Great Wall is one of the ecological engineerings trying to ease this situation. In order to solve the problems of wind-sand disasters and water-soil erosion from the root, the construction of the three-shelter forest became stringent. Wind-sand erosion problem is serious in this area, and sandstorms are frequent. In the past 20 years from the early 1960s to the late 1970s, 6.69 million hectares of land were desertification, and more than 13 million hectares of farmland were affected by sandstorms. It has a significantly bad impact on local ecology situation, local resident daily life, and the development of local economy.

== Stakeholders ==
With the progress of the Great Green Wall, the wicked situation is relieved to some extent. The intuitive benefits provided by the the program is that many local residents don’t have to keep moving from place to place. The anxiety of the dust burying the building is no longer exists for the local.

What’s more, the biomass power plant gradually becomes one of the economy income pathways. The branches of Salix psammophila can be the essential electricity generating material. Salix psammophila is an important vegetation to prevent wind and fix sand. This kind of plant has a special physiology feature. Only when the lateral branches are cut, the main stem can grow taller and thicker. In this case, the local people collect the ‘unnecessary’branches and hand to the specific material company. The company uniformly deliver the materials to the power station. The local area gradually formed an industry chain integrated with planning, management, protection, storage and processing. With the constant planting of the Salix psammophila which provides the benefits of preventing strong wind and fixing sand, the grass could also be planted in the area. In this case, more sheep could be feeded in the land. A virtuous circle is happening from local residents to the private sector to state-owned enterprises.

== Ecological Benefits ==
The Three-North Shelterbelt has significant protection and regulation for the climate, soil and agriculture of the entire three-north region.
{| class="wikitable"
|+
!
!Effects
!Statistics
|-
!'''Regional Climate Regulation'''
|
* Wind preventing
* Temperature regulation
* Air moisture regulation
|
* According to the measurements of the three-north region, the effective distance of the forest belt to reduce the wind speed has been about 20-25 times higher than the height of the forest belt, and the wind speed has been reduced by 27-40%<ref name=":0">Huang, L., Zhu, P., Xiao, T., Cao, Y., & Gong, G. (2018). Wind and Sand Fixation Effect of the Green Great Wall System Construction Project in the Past 35 Years. ''Geography Science'', 38(4), 600-609. Retrieved from http://xueshu.baidu.com/usercenter/paper/show?paperid=353eec52dc01bd2ae65e6c1e5d2c8873&site=xueshu_se </ref>.
* Green Great Wall has had a warming effect in spring and autumn with an average temperature increase of about 0.5-2°C, a cooling effect in summer with an average temperature decrease of about 6-10 °C, and the temperature rise in winter is 1-3 °C<ref>Wang, P., Yan, J., Jiang, C., Liu, X., & Liao, G. (2014). The Analysis of Climate Change in the Green Great Wall Project Area. ''Bulletin of Soil and Water Conservation'', 34(1), 273-278. Retrieved from http://xueshu.baidu.com/usercenter/paper/show?paperid=52953c6799d26b093bf194c166d67c5c&site=xueshu_se&hitarticle=1</ref>.
* The evaporation of the three-north region is reduced by approximately 14% on average, which facilitates the development of local dry farming<ref name=":4">Dai, L., Wang, X., & Wang J. (2000). Indicators to Assess the Ecological Effect of the Three-North Shelterbelt System. ''World Forestry Research'', 13(2), 47-51. Retrieved from http://www.wanfangdata.com.cn/details/detail.do?_type=perio&id=sjlyyj200002013</ref>.
|-
!'''Soil Improvement'''
|
* Soil moisture regulation
* Soil physical properties improvement
* Soil fixation
|
* The soil evaporation has been reduced by 15-20% than the forest network, and the water surface evaporation is reduced by 20-40%<ref name=":4" />. Plant transpiration varies by species, generally reduced by 20-30%<ref name=":4" />.
* The three-north shelterbelt has the function of perfecting the water-soluble constituents of the soil. The proportion of Ca2+ in the soil of shelterbelt has been increased, while that of Na+ has been decreased, which enhances permeability and arability of soil<ref name=":4" />. Trees growing in the shelterbelt have the ability to absorb salt, such as poplars, willows, sorghum, etc.
* Taking the Loess Plateau as an example, when the vegetation coverage is 20-40%, it has a significant effect on reducing soil erosion<ref name=":0" />.
|-
!'''Increasing Agriculture Productivity'''
|
* Crop production improvement
|
* The ecological environment of farmland has been enhanced by the effect above, promoting crop growth and yield. Corn and rice yields rates have increased by 14% and 15% respectively<ref name=":4" />. The emergence of corn seedlings has been 2~3 days in advance, and the maturity period is 4~5 days early<ref name=":4" />.
|}

== The Evidence for the Problem ==

=== Ecological problems ===

==== Violate the health living principles ====
To reach the long-term goals, the Green Great Wall Project followed a principle called "easy before difficult, from near to far"<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal|last=Mao|first=Rixin|last2=Chen|first2=Gang|last3=Zhang|first3=Shaoqiang|date=2017|title=三北防护林工程建设中若干问题及应对建议|trans-title=Some Problems and Countermeasures in the Construction of Three-North Shelter Forest Project|url=|journal=Protection Forest Science and Technology|volume=|issue=|pages=58-61|doi=10.13601/j.issn.1005-5215.2017.10.020|via=CNKI}}</ref>. In other words, the process of afforestation first started from the areas with easy living condition, then moved to the areas with tough living condition. However, with the step-by-step promotion of afforestation, the relatively easy parts of the project have already completed. The rest are mostly left because of their poor natural conditions, inconvenient transportation, and bare of humanity<ref name=":3" />. The poor site conditions vastly decrease the growth rate, survival rate, and preservation rate of afforestation.

Much worse, people who involved in the project only pay attention to seeking quick success and instant benefits of the project, ignoring to put the right tree at the right place. In some cases, shrubs are more suitable in some arid and water-scarce desert areas rather than trees like the poplar and spruce. Large amount of water absorbed by long roots of trees as well as the added water evaporation by large leaves will aggravate the shortage of water resources in the region<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Sun|first=Guili|last2=Li|first2=Xiaona|last3=Wang|first3=Dong|date=2007|title=“三北”防护林建设中若干问题的生态思考|trans-title=The Ecological Thinking of the Three - North Forest Shelterbelt Program|url=http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFQ&dbname=CJFD2007&filename=XJSZ200703070&uid=WEEvREcwSlJHSldRa1FhdkJkVG1CcDNkZVhQKzkxOHpDTWVFeUVCSFpKOD0=$9A4hF_YAuvQ5obgVAqNKPCYcEjKensW4IQMovwHtwkF4VYPoHbKxJw!!&v=MDA2OTRxVHJXTTFGckNVUkxPZlpPZHJGaURsVjd6TlBTZllkTEc0SHRiTXJJOUNaSVI4ZVgxTHV4WVM3RGgxVDM=|journal=Journal of Xinjiang Normal University (Natural Sciences Edition)|volume=26|pages=217-219|issn=1008-9659|via=CNKI}}</ref>. Hence, planting too much arbors in arid and water-deficient desert areas will not achieve good results diametrically. Under this circumstance, the ecological functions have been sharply diminished.

==== Low level of biodiversity ====
Biodiversity plays a significant role in ecosystems which directly influences the ecological processes. High level of biodiversity can increase the ecological functioning while low level of biodiversity decreases the efficiency of ecological communities to capture biologically essential resources, produce biomass, decompose and recycle biologically essential nutrients<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=|title=Biodiversity Loss and Its Impact on Humanity|url=|journal=|volume=|pages=|via=}}</ref>.

Low level of biodiversity has acted as a long-term ecological problem in the Green Great Wall since it has been put into implemented. In the early stage of the project, a large number of pure artificial forests with high survival rate or fast-growing tree species were planted. Those pieces of forests only contain one specific species such as poplar and willow, which can bring enormous economic benefits from forestry production, and improve forestry management efficiency in short period. However, this kind of forest pattern results in simple forest structure with less mixed tree species and more same-age forest stands, which indicates the low level of biological diversity. Meanwhile, the lower level of biodiversity is accompanied by the weaker resilience of the forests. Those artificial forests are extremely easy to be infected by diseases and pests, and it can cause extensive damage once infected<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Jiang|first=Fengqi|last2=Zhu|first2=Jiaojun|date=2002|title=防护林阶段定向经营研究|trans-title=Phase-directional Management of Protective Plantations|url=http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFQ&dbname=CJFD2002&filename=YYSB200210033&v=MTg0MzFOcjQ5R1o0UjhlWDFMdXhZUzdEaDFUM3FUcldNMUZyQ1VSTE9mWk9kckZpRGdWcjNKUERUWWJMRzRIdFA=|journal=Chinese Journal of Applied Ecology|volume=13|pages=1352-1355|doi=10.13287/j.1001-9332.2002.0310|via=CNKI}}</ref>. For example, more than 130,000 pure poplars in Yongdeng County, Gansu Province has been destroyed by longicore since the end of the 20th century<ref name=":3" />.

==== Stand degradation ====
Limited by the development of economy and technology at the early stage, the quality of the artificial forest stands is generally low, followed by large scale of stand aging. Started from the 1970s, the action of afforestation has led to the existence of a great amount of mature forests, taking a relatively large proportion of overall tree number<ref name=":3" />. When forests reach the overripening stage, the functions of the project decline due to the slow-down growth speed and reduced biomass of the forests<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bu|first=Jun|date=2016|title=辽宁省退化防护林现状及成因分析|trans-title=Present Situation and Cause of Formation of Degraded Shelterbelt in Liaoning Province|url=http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFQ&dbname=CJFDLAST2016&filename=FHLK201606040&uid=WEEvREcwSlJHSldRa1FhdkJkVG1CcDNkZVhQN0Y4Q3lVMldDcmdHOTZjRT0=$9A4hF_YAuvQ5obgVAqNKPCYcEjKensW4IQMovwHtwkF4VYPoHbKxJw!!&v=MDU5NDk5Zk1xWTlCWklSOGVYMUx1eFlTN0RoMVQzcVRyV00xRnJDVVJMT2ZaT2RyRmlEaFZMck1JeVhIWmJHNEg=|journal=Protection Forest Science and Technology|volume=|pages=101-102|doi=10.13601/j.issn.1005-5215.2016.06.040|via=}}</ref>. Therefore, the stand aging accelerates the speed of stand degradation.

In addition, some places blindly pursue the quantity of afforestation while neglect the stand quality, regardless of the natural mechanisms and the priority of ecological benefits. As a consequence, the situation of stand degradation tends to be more severe, affecting the overall effectiveness of the project to move forward smoothly.

=== Social and financial problems ===

==== Lack of public participation ====
The Green Great Wall Project started at 1970s when Chinese Economic Reform occurred<ref>Zhu, J., Zhou, X., & Hu, J. (2004). Thinking and prospect of "three north" shelterbelt system project. ''Journal of natural resources'', 19(1), 79-85.</ref> . The Economic Reform stimulated public’s enthusiasm to do what government told them to do<ref>Wu, Q. (2009). The changing track of patriotic expression of young students in the 30 years of reform and opening up. ''Chinese youth studies,'' 1.</ref> . Moreover, people did not have many choices to earn money while agriculture is the main industry. The project was attractive because participant could get relatively considerable profits and subsides. Therefore, local communities were willing to join in the project and plant trees, and the first stage of great wall project was successfully done. However, after the soaring of economy in 1990s, people were no longer unsatisfied with the profits of growing trees when they have more choices<ref name=":5">Zhang, J. (1996). Achievements and problems in the construction of "three north" shelterbelt system. Retrieved from http://www.cnki.com.cn/Article/CJFDTotal-LYJJ199602001</ref> . With the deepening of reform, farmers' interest in afforestation, especially shelterbelt, begun to decline. The connection between shelterbelt and farmers' profit stream was not as close as in the early stage, which was inconsistent with the goal of farmers' rapid income growth<ref name=":5" />. Some of the preferential policies originally formulated were no longer attractive to the masses, and farmers have gained greater choice and corresponding preferential policies from the reform.

==== Lack of funding ====
The conflict between the government’s expectation and people’s interests has become increasingly clear since 1990s<ref name=":5" />. The project is a large-scale public welfare undertaking which gives priority to protection and concern on environment. And public have main purpose on making money. As a developing country, government had financial problems. Funding was inadequate from the beginning of the project. Individual could only get fifty-one Yuan as pension after they afforestation one hectare<ref name=":5" /> . Farmers preferred to give priority to the projects with large benefits and quick results. Also, because most of forests in project were shelterbelt which could not bring much economic benefits, people are not willing to get involved in the project. Instead, they relatively preferred to grow economic forests.

==== Inappropriate management system ====
The role of the management system should not be underestimated. However, with the deepening of the reform, the government system that used to play the overall function has been changed. Some local forestry departments were merged, and some local organizations were cut off the financial support. Those organizations were forced to make live with other stuffs which might be illegal and negative to the project. For instance, those local organizations would authorize an already forested area as project area to get pension. While they would not build up shelterbelt. Therefore, the foundation of the management system became unstable, and its function was weakened.

== Recommendations ==
Based on the problems above, here are some recommendations to alleviate the problems.
# '''Improving biodiversity'''
#* Increase the richness and evenness of new-planted tree species.
#* Improve the ratio of mixed stand by allocating various species.
#** First, the stand structure should be planted combining with different layers from trees, shrubs, to grass.
#** Secondly, it should include both conifers and broad-leaf species as well as general-growing tree species with fast-growing tree species.
# '''Improving stand structure stability'''
#* The newly planted forest should focus on selecting native tree species with good stability. Also, introducing suitable exotic plants with equivalent or similar niche can be one solution as an important supplement to native tree species.
#* If the natural vegetation is preserved in good condition, the afforest area can be sealed by fencing, signage, artificial management and artificial promotion. In that case, the quality of new-planted forest can be improved and the stability of ecosystem can be enhanced by using nature's self-healing ability<ref name=":3" />.
# '''Revising policy for modern conditions'''
#* Since China's reform, the process of policy design has been constantly promoted along with changes in the situation. When the promotion effect of a policy decreases due to changes in the objective environment. New policies should be issued accordingly, either to strengthen the effect of the original policy or to produce new effects.
# '''Adapting to local conditions'''
#* One-fit-all model will lead Three-North Shelterbelt Program to failure and it is also one of the main causes of current problems. Therefore, different governance modes and regional governance methods should be selected according to the resource advantages and governance status quo of different regions.
# '''Enhancing economic efficiency'''
#* It is an effective approach to stimulate the constructors' enthusiasm and initiative through enhance the economic attraction of the project itself. While governments focus on improving the ecological environment, they should also promote the economic benefits from project, such as setting up green industry and developing sand tourism, to help project out of the wood.
# '''Applying multiple conservation mechanisms'''
#* Build up Ecosystem payment system - People would have opportunity lost when they decide to be involved in Three-North Shelter Forest Program. To ensure people will not avoid project because of their lost, governments should establish ES payment to compensate those people who pay for ecological benefits.
#* Community-based forest conservation - China's Green Great Wall is a vast construction project that involves different groups of stakeholders. To address the existing problems, stakeholders should positively connect with each other and collaborate for efficient multidirectional communication. Meanwhile, it is significant to clarify the authority of land ownership, use rights, and other bonds of rights by legislation for the local community because they are the most affected stakeholder group.

== Conclusion ==
You should conclude your Wiki paper by summarizing the topic, or some aspect of the topic, as if possible, state a policy recommendation.

== References ==

<references />

{{Projectbox CONS200|names=Lauren Chen; Hongkai Qiu; Lingsen Kong; Yixuan Yu|share=yes}}

[[Category:Conservation]]

Course:CONS200/2019/Ecological Benefits and Costs of China's Green Great Wall

2019-04-03T19:13:28Z

YIXUANYU: /* Recommendations */

[[File:Map_of_Green_Great_Wall_in_China.jpg|thumb|421x421px|Location of Green Great Wall in China]]
Green Great Wall, or Three-North Shelter Forest Program, or Three-North Shelterbelt Program, is a sequence of artificial shelter forests in northwestern, northeastern, and northeastern regions of China<ref name=":2">Meng, F. (2014). The Significance and Role of the Green Great Wall Construction. New Countryside: ''Heilongjiang''(8), 305-305. doi:10.3969/j.issn.1674-8409.2014.08.305 </ref>. It starts ranging from Binxian County in Heilongjiang Province in the east to Wusongbeili Mountain in Xinjiang in the west, and from the northern border in the north to Hai River, Yongding River, Wei River and Tao River, Burhan Budai Mountain<ref name=":2" />. The construction of the Green Great Wall covers 551 counties (flags, cities, and districts) in 13 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government) with a total area of 4.069 million hectares, accounting for 42.4% of the country's land area<ref name=":2" />. Among these aras, there are 12 Gobi, deserts and sand lands with an area of 133,000 km, as well as 0.367 million hectares Loess Plateau that has severe soil erosion, sparse vegetation and lots of gullies<ref name=":2" />.

The project began in 1979 and its planning period is 70 years<ref name=":1">Three-North Shelterbelt Program. (2019). In ''Baidupedia''. The Great Wall Project. Retrieved on February 11, 2019, from https://baike.baidu.com/item/“三北”防护林工/11046362?fromtitle=%E4%B8%89%E5%8C%97%E9%98%B2%E6%8A%A4%E6%9E%97&fromid=1845823#reference-%5B4%5D-695089-wrap </ref>. By 2050, the planned afforestation area will be 535 million hectares, and the forest coverage rate in these three regions will increase from 5.05% in 1979 to 15.95% in 2050<ref name=":1" />. Until 2018, the afforestation area has been completed to 30.149 million hectares, and the forest coverage rate of the project area has increased to 13.59%<ref name=":1" />. At present, China’s Green Great Wall has gained great ecological achievement but has generated a great number of financial costs. Meanwhile, various problems have emerged and impeded the project to proceed, in terms of ecology, finance, policy, and society. Those existing problems will be discussed, and recommendations that correspond with different aspects will be suggested.
[[File:Three_North_Shelter_Forest_Program_in_northern_China.png|thumb|455x455px|Green Great Wall in northern China in detail]]

== Background ==
[[File:Green_Great_Wall.jpg|thumb|440x440px|Green Great Wall in Pinglu Qipan Mountains]]
China is one of the biggest countries in the world, covering approximately 9,600,000 square kilometers, with diverse climate types and varied terrains. With the ever-accelerated development, the formation of ecological problems was facilitated to some extent, especially where ecological conditions are fragile. The Green Great Wall is one of the ecological engineerings trying to ease this situation. In order to solve the problems of wind-sand disasters and water-soil erosion from the root, the construction of the three-shelter forest became stringent. Wind-sand erosion problem is serious in this area, and sandstorms are frequent. In the past 20 years from the early 1960s to the late 1970s, 6.69 million hectares of land were desertification, and more than 13 million hectares of farmland were affected by sandstorms. It has a significantly bad impact on local ecology situation, local resident daily life, and the development of local economy.

== Stakeholders ==
With the progress of the Great Green Wall, the wicked situation is relieved to some extent. The intuitive benefits provided by the the program is that many local residents don’t have to keep moving from place to place. The anxiety of the dust burying the building is no longer exists for the local.

What’s more, the biomass power plant gradually becomes one of the economy income pathways. The branches of Salix psammophila can be the essential electricity generating material. Salix psammophila is an important vegetation to prevent wind and fix sand. This kind of plant has a special physiology feature. Only when the lateral branches are cut, the main stem can grow taller and thicker. In this case, the local people collect the ‘unnecessary’branches and hand to the specific material company. The company uniformly deliver the materials to the power station. The local area gradually formed an industry chain integrated with planning, management, protection, storage and processing. With the constant planting of the Salix psammophila which provides the benefits of preventing strong wind and fixing sand, the grass could also be planted in the area. In this case, more sheep could be feeded in the land. A virtuous circle is happening from local residents to the private sector to state-owned enterprises.

== Ecological Benefits ==
The Three-North Shelterbelt has significant protection and regulation for the climate, soil and agriculture of the entire three-north region.
{| class="wikitable"
|+
!
!Effects
!Statistics
|-
!'''Regional Climate Regulation'''
|
* Wind preventing
* Temperature regulation
* Air moisture regulation
|
* According to the measurements of the three-north region, the effective distance of the forest belt to reduce the wind speed has been about 20-25 times higher than the height of the forest belt, and the wind speed has been reduced by 27-40%<ref name=":0">Huang, L., Zhu, P., Xiao, T., Cao, Y., & Gong, G. (2018). Wind and Sand Fixation Effect of the Green Great Wall System Construction Project in the Past 35 Years. ''Geography Science'', 38(4), 600-609. Retrieved from http://xueshu.baidu.com/usercenter/paper/show?paperid=353eec52dc01bd2ae65e6c1e5d2c8873&site=xueshu_se </ref>.
* Green Great Wall has had a warming effect in spring and autumn with an average temperature increase of about 0.5-2°C, a cooling effect in summer with an average temperature decrease of about 6-10 °C, and the temperature rise in winter is 1-3 °C<ref>Wang, P., Yan, J., Jiang, C., Liu, X., & Liao, G. (2014). The Analysis of Climate Change in the Green Great Wall Project Area. ''Bulletin of Soil and Water Conservation'', 34(1), 273-278. Retrieved from http://xueshu.baidu.com/usercenter/paper/show?paperid=52953c6799d26b093bf194c166d67c5c&site=xueshu_se&hitarticle=1</ref>.
* The evaporation of the three-north region is reduced by approximately 14% on average, which facilitates the development of local dry farming<ref name=":4">Dai, L., Wang, X., & Wang J. (2000). Indicators to Assess the Ecological Effect of the Three-North Shelterbelt System. ''World Forestry Research'', 13(2), 47-51. Retrieved from http://www.wanfangdata.com.cn/details/detail.do?_type=perio&id=sjlyyj200002013</ref>.
|-
!'''Soil Improvement'''
|
* Soil moisture regulation
* Soil physical properties improvement
* Soil fixation
|
* The soil evaporation has been reduced by 15-20% than the forest network, and the water surface evaporation is reduced by 20-40%<ref name=":4" />. Plant transpiration varies by species, generally reduced by 20-30%<ref name=":4" />.
* The three-north shelterbelt has the function of perfecting the water-soluble constituents of the soil. The proportion of Ca2+ in the soil of shelterbelt has been increased, while that of Na+ has been decreased, which enhances permeability and arability of soil<ref name=":4" />. Trees growing in the shelterbelt have the ability to absorb salt, such as poplars, willows, sorghum, etc.
* Taking the Loess Plateau as an example, when the vegetation coverage is 20-40%, it has a significant effect on reducing soil erosion<ref name=":0" />.
|-
!'''Increasing Agriculture Productivity'''
|
* Crop production improvement
|
* The ecological environment of farmland has been enhanced by the effect above, promoting crop growth and yield. Corn and rice yields rates have increased by 14% and 15% respectively<ref name=":4" />. The emergence of corn seedlings has been 2~3 days in advance, and the maturity period is 4~5 days early<ref name=":4" />.
|}

== The Evidence for the Problem ==

=== Ecological problems ===

==== Violate the health living principles ====
To reach the long-term goals, the Green Great Wall Project followed a principle called "easy before difficult, from near to far"<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal|last=Mao|first=Rixin|last2=Chen|first2=Gang|last3=Zhang|first3=Shaoqiang|date=2017|title=三北防护林工程建设中若干问题及应对建议|trans-title=Some Problems and Countermeasures in the Construction of Three-North Shelter Forest Project|url=|journal=Protection Forest Science and Technology|volume=|issue=|pages=58-61|doi=10.13601/j.issn.1005-5215.2017.10.020|via=CNKI}}</ref>. In other words, the process of afforestation first started from the areas with easy living condition, then moved to the areas with tough living condition. However, with the step-by-step promotion of afforestation, the relatively easy parts of the project have already completed. The rest are mostly left because of their poor natural conditions, inconvenient transportation, and bare of humanity<ref name=":3" />. The poor site conditions vastly decrease the growth rate, survival rate, and preservation rate of afforestation.

Much worse, people who involved in the project only pay attention to seeking quick success and instant benefits of the project, ignoring to put the right tree at the right place. In some cases, shrubs are more suitable in some arid and water-scarce desert areas rather than trees like the poplar and spruce. Large amount of water absorbed by long roots of trees as well as the added water evaporation by large leaves will aggravate the shortage of water resources in the region<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Sun|first=Guili|last2=Li|first2=Xiaona|last3=Wang|first3=Dong|date=2007|title=“三北”防护林建设中若干问题的生态思考|trans-title=The Ecological Thinking of the Three - North Forest Shelterbelt Program|url=http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFQ&dbname=CJFD2007&filename=XJSZ200703070&uid=WEEvREcwSlJHSldRa1FhdkJkVG1CcDNkZVhQKzkxOHpDTWVFeUVCSFpKOD0=$9A4hF_YAuvQ5obgVAqNKPCYcEjKensW4IQMovwHtwkF4VYPoHbKxJw!!&v=MDA2OTRxVHJXTTFGckNVUkxPZlpPZHJGaURsVjd6TlBTZllkTEc0SHRiTXJJOUNaSVI4ZVgxTHV4WVM3RGgxVDM=|journal=Journal of Xinjiang Normal University (Natural Sciences Edition)|volume=26|pages=217-219|issn=1008-9659|via=CNKI}}</ref>. Hence, planting too much arbors in arid and water-deficient desert areas will not achieve good results diametrically. Under this circumstance, the ecological functions have been sharply diminished.

==== Low level of biodiversity ====
Biodiversity plays a significant role in ecosystems which directly influences the ecological processes. High level of biodiversity can increase the ecological functioning while low level of biodiversity decreases the efficiency of ecological communities to capture biologically essential resources, produce biomass, decompose and recycle biologically essential nutrients<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=|title=Biodiversity Loss and Its Impact on Humanity|url=|journal=|volume=|pages=|via=}}</ref>.

Low level of biodiversity has acted as a long-term ecological problem in the Green Great Wall since it has been put into implemented. In the early stage of the project, a large number of pure artificial forests with high survival rate or fast-growing tree species were planted. Those pieces of forests only contain one specific species such as poplar and willow, which can bring enormous economic benefits from forestry production, and improve forestry management efficiency in short period. However, this kind of forest pattern results in simple forest structure with less mixed tree species and more same-age forest stands, which indicates the low level of biological diversity. Meanwhile, the lower level of biodiversity is accompanied by the weaker resilience of the forests. Those artificial forests are extremely easy to be infected by diseases and pests, and it can cause extensive damage once infected<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Jiang|first=Fengqi|last2=Zhu|first2=Jiaojun|date=2002|title=防护林阶段定向经营研究|trans-title=Phase-directional Management of Protective Plantations|url=http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFQ&dbname=CJFD2002&filename=YYSB200210033&v=MTg0MzFOcjQ5R1o0UjhlWDFMdXhZUzdEaDFUM3FUcldNMUZyQ1VSTE9mWk9kckZpRGdWcjNKUERUWWJMRzRIdFA=|journal=Chinese Journal of Applied Ecology|volume=13|pages=1352-1355|doi=10.13287/j.1001-9332.2002.0310|via=CNKI}}</ref>. For example, more than 130,000 pure poplars in Yongdeng County, Gansu Province has been destroyed by longicore since the end of the 20th century<ref name=":3" />.

==== Stand degradation ====
Limited by the development of economy and technology at the early stage, the quality of the artificial forest stands is generally low, followed by large scale of stand aging. Started from the 1970s, the action of afforestation has led to the existence of a great amount of mature forests, taking a relatively large proportion of overall tree number<ref name=":3" />. When forests reach the overripening stage, the functions of the project decline due to the slow-down growth speed and reduced biomass of the forests<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bu|first=Jun|date=2016|title=辽宁省退化防护林现状及成因分析|trans-title=Present Situation and Cause of Formation of Degraded Shelterbelt in Liaoning Province|url=http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFQ&dbname=CJFDLAST2016&filename=FHLK201606040&uid=WEEvREcwSlJHSldRa1FhdkJkVG1CcDNkZVhQN0Y4Q3lVMldDcmdHOTZjRT0=$9A4hF_YAuvQ5obgVAqNKPCYcEjKensW4IQMovwHtwkF4VYPoHbKxJw!!&v=MDU5NDk5Zk1xWTlCWklSOGVYMUx1eFlTN0RoMVQzcVRyV00xRnJDVVJMT2ZaT2RyRmlEaFZMck1JeVhIWmJHNEg=|journal=Protection Forest Science and Technology|volume=|pages=101-102|doi=10.13601/j.issn.1005-5215.2016.06.040|via=}}</ref>. Therefore, the stand aging accelerates the speed of stand degradation.

In addition, some places blindly pursue the quantity of afforestation while neglect the stand quality, regardless of the natural mechanisms and the priority of ecological benefits. As a consequence, the situation of stand degradation tends to be more severe, affecting the overall effectiveness of the project to move forward smoothly.

=== Social and financial problems ===

==== Lack of public participation ====
The Green Great Wall Project started at 1970s when Chinese Economic Reform occurred<ref>Zhu, J., Zhou, X., & Hu, J. (2004). Thinking and prospect of "three north" shelterbelt system project. ''Journal of natural resources'', 19(1), 79-85.</ref> . The Economic Reform stimulated public’s enthusiasm to do what government told them to do<ref>Wu, Q. (2009). The changing track of patriotic expression of young students in the 30 years of reform and opening up. ''Chinese youth studies,'' 1.</ref> . Moreover, people did not have many choices to earn money while agriculture is the main industry. The project was attractive because participant could get relatively considerable profits and subsides. Therefore, local communities were willing to join in the project and plant trees, and the first stage of great wall project was successfully done. However, after the soaring of economy in 1990s, people were no longer unsatisfied with the profits of growing trees when they have more choices<ref name=":5">Zhang, J. (1996). Achievements and problems in the construction of "three north" shelterbelt system. Retrieved from http://www.cnki.com.cn/Article/CJFDTotal-LYJJ199602001</ref> . With the deepening of reform, farmers' interest in afforestation, especially shelterbelt, begun to decline. The connection between shelterbelt and farmers' profit stream was not as close as in the early stage, which was inconsistent with the goal of farmers' rapid income growth<ref name=":5" />. Some of the preferential policies originally formulated were no longer attractive to the masses, and farmers have gained greater choice and corresponding preferential policies from the reform.

==== Lack of funding ====
The conflict between the government’s expectation and people’s interests has become increasingly clear since 1990s<ref name=":5" />. The project is a large-scale public welfare undertaking which gives priority to protection and concern on environment. And public have main purpose on making money. As a developing country, government had financial problems. Funding was inadequate from the beginning of the project. Individual could only get fifty-one Yuan as pension after they afforestation one hectare<ref name=":5" /> . Farmers preferred to give priority to the projects with large benefits and quick results. Also, because most of forests in project were shelterbelt which could not bring much economic benefits, people are not willing to get involved in the project. Instead, they relatively preferred to grow economic forests.

==== Inappropriate management system ====
The role of the management system should not be underestimated. However, with the deepening of the reform, the government system that used to play the overall function has been changed. Some local forestry departments were merged, and some local organizations were cut off the financial support. Those organizations were forced to make live with other stuffs which might be illegal and negative to the project. For instance, those local organizations would authorize an already forested area as project area to get pension. While they would not build up shelterbelt. Therefore, the foundation of the management system became unstable, and its function was weakened.

== Recommendations ==
Based on the problems above, here are some recommendations to alleviate the problems.
# '''Improving biodiversity'''
#* Revise existing afforestation strategies to increase the richness and evenness of different tree species.
#* Improve the ratio of mixed stand by allocating various species.
#** First, the stand structure should be planted combining with different layers from trees, shrubs, to grass.
#** Secondly, it should include both conifers and broad-leaf species as well as general-growing tree species with fast-growing tree species.
# '''Improving stand structure stability'''
#* The newly planted forest should focus on selecting native tree species with good stability. Also, introducing suitable exotic plants with equivalent or similar niche can be one solution as an important supplement to native tree species.
#* If the natural vegetation is preserved in good condition, the afforest area can be sealed by fencing, signage, artificial management and artificial promotion. In that case, the quality of new-planted forest can be improved and the stability of ecosystem can be enhanced by using nature's self-healing ability<ref name=":3" />.
# '''Revising policy for modern conditions'''
#* Since China's reform, the process of policy design has been constantly promoted along with changes in the situation. When the promotion effect of a policy decreases due to changes in the objective environment. New policies should be issued accordingly, either to strengthen the effect of the original policy or to produce new effects.
# '''Adapting to local conditions'''
#* One-fit-all model will lead Three-North Shelterbelt Program to failure and it is also one of the main causes of current problems. Therefore, different governance modes and regional governance methods should be selected according to the resource advantages and governance status quo of different regions.
# '''Enhancing economic efficiency'''
#* It is an effective approach to stimulate the constructors' enthusiasm and initiative through enhance the economic attraction of the project itself. While governments focus on improving the ecological environment, they should also promote the economic benefits from project, such as setting up green industry and developing sand tourism, to help project out of the wood.
# '''Applying multiple conservation mechanisms'''
#* Build up Ecosystem payment system - People would have opportunity lost when they decide to be involved in Three-North Shelter Forest Program. To ensure people will not avoid project because of their lost, governments should establish ES payment to compensate those people who pay for ecological benefits.
#* Community-based forest conservation - China's Green Great Wall is a vast construction project that involves different groups of stakeholders. To address the existing problems, stakeholders should positively connect with each other and collaborate for efficient multidirectional communication. Meanwhile, it is significant to clarify the authority of land ownership, use rights, and other bonds of rights by legislation for the local community because they are the most affected stakeholder group.

== Conclusion ==
You should conclude your Wiki paper by summarizing the topic, or some aspect of the topic, as if possible, state a policy recommendation.

== References ==

<references />

{{Projectbox CONS200|names=Lauren Chen; Hongkai Qiu; Lingsen Kong; Yixuan Yu|share=yes}}

[[Category:Conservation]]

Course:CONS200/2019/Ecological Benefits and Costs of China's Green Great Wall

2019-04-03T01:00:31Z

YIXUANYU: /* Recommendations */

[[File:Map_of_Green_Great_Wall_in_China.jpg|thumb|421x421px|Location of Green Great Wall in China]]
Green Great Wall, or Three-North Shelter Forest Program, or Three-North Shelterbelt Program, is a sequence of artificial shelter forests in northwestern, northeastern, and northeastern regions of China<ref name=":2">Meng, F. (2014). The Significance and Role of the Green Great Wall Construction. New Countryside: ''Heilongjiang''(8), 305-305. doi:10.3969/j.issn.1674-8409.2014.08.305 </ref>. It starts ranging from Binxian County in Heilongjiang Province in the east to Wusongbeili Mountain in Xinjiang in the west, and from the northern border in the north to Hai River, Yongding River, Wei River and Tao River, Burhan Budai Mountain<ref name=":2" />. The construction of the Green Great Wall covers 551 counties (flags, cities, and districts) in 13 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government) with a total area of 4.069 million hectares, accounting for 42.4% of the country's land area<ref name=":2" />. Among these aras, there are 12 Gobi, deserts and sand lands with an area of 133,000 km, as well as 0.367 million hectares Loess Plateau that has severe soil erosion, sparse vegetation and lots of gullies<ref name=":2" />.

The project began in 1979 and its planning period is 70 years<ref name=":1">Three-North Shelterbelt Program. (2019). In ''Baidupedia''. The Great Wall Project. Retrieved on February 11, 2019, from https://baike.baidu.com/item/“三北”防护林工/11046362?fromtitle=%E4%B8%89%E5%8C%97%E9%98%B2%E6%8A%A4%E6%9E%97&fromid=1845823#reference-%5B4%5D-695089-wrap </ref>. By 2050, the planned afforestation area will be 535 million hectares, and the forest coverage rate in these three regions will increase from 5.05% in 1979 to 15.95% in 2050<ref name=":1" />. Until 2018, the afforestation area has been completed to 30.149 million hectares, and the forest coverage rate of the project area has increased to 13.59%<ref name=":1" />. At present, China’s Green Great Wall has gained great ecological achievement but has generated a great number of financial costs. Meanwhile, various problems have emerged and impeded the project to proceed, in terms of ecology, finance, policy, and society. Those existing problems will be discussed, and recommendations that correspond with different aspects will be suggested.
[[File:Three_North_Shelter_Forest_Program_in_northern_China.png|thumb|455x455px|Green Great Wall in northern China in detail]]

== Background ==
[[File:Green_Great_Wall.jpg|thumb|440x440px|Green Great Wall in Pinglu Qipan Mountains]]
China is one of the biggest countries in the world, covering approximately 9,600,000 square kilometers, with diverse

climate types and varied terrains. With the ever-accelerated development, the formation of ecological problems was facilitated to some extent, especially where ecological conditions are fragile. The Green Great Wall is one of the ecological engineerings trying to ease this situation. In order to solve the problems of wind-sand disasters and water-soil erosion from the root, the construction of the three-shelter forest became stringent. Wind-sand erosion problem is serious in this area, and sandstorms are frequent. In the past 20 years from the early 1960s to the late 1970s, 6.69 million hectares of land were desertification, and more than 13 million hectares of farmland were affected by sandstorms. It has a significantly bad impact on local ecology situation, local resident daily life, and the development of local economy.

== Stakeholders ==
With the progress of the Great Green Wall, the wicked situation is relieved to some extent. The intuitive benefits provided by the the program is that many local residents don’t have to keep moving from place to place. The anxiety of the dust burying the building is no longer exists for the local.

What’s more, the biomass power plant gradually becomes one of the economy income pathways. The branches of Salix psammophila can be the essential electricity generating material. Salix psammophila is an important vegetation to prevent wind and fix sand. This kind of plant has a special physiology feature. Only when the lateral branches are cut, the main stem can grow taller and thicker. In this case, the local people collect the ‘unnecessary’branches and hand to the specific material company. The company uniformly deliver the materials to the power station. The local area gradually formed an industry chain integrated with planning, management, protection, storage and processing. With the constant planting of the Salix psammophila which provides the benefits of preventing strong wind and fixing sand, the grass could also be planted in the area. In this case, more sheep could be feeded in the land. A virtuous circle is happening from local residents to the private sector to state-owned enterprises.

== Ecological Benefits ==
The Three-North Shelterbelt has significant protection and regulation for the climate, soil and agriculture of the entire three-north region.
{| class="wikitable"
|+
!
!Effects
!Statistics
|-
!'''Regional Climate Regulation'''
|
* Wind preventing
* Temperature regulation
* Air moisture regulation
|
* According to the measurements of the three-north region, the effective distance of the forest belt to reduce the wind speed has been about 20-25 times higher than the height of the forest belt, and the wind speed has been reduced by 27-40%<ref name=":0">Huang, L., Zhu, P., Xiao, T., Cao, Y., & Gong, G. (2018). Wind and Sand Fixation Effect of the Green Great Wall System Construction Project in the Past 35 Years. ''Geography Science'', 38(4), 600-609. Retrieved from http://xueshu.baidu.com/usercenter/paper/show?paperid=353eec52dc01bd2ae65e6c1e5d2c8873&site=xueshu_se </ref>.
* Green Great Wall has had a warming effect in spring and autumn with an average temperature increase of about 0.5-2°C, a cooling effect in summer with an average temperature decrease of about 6-10 °C, and the temperature rise in winter is 1-3 °C<ref>Wang, P., Yan, J., Jiang, C., Liu, X., & Liao, G. (2014). The Analysis of Climate Change in the Green Great Wall Project Area. ''Bulletin of Soil and Water Conservation'', 34(1), 273-278. Retrieved from http://xueshu.baidu.com/usercenter/paper/show?paperid=52953c6799d26b093bf194c166d67c5c&site=xueshu_se&hitarticle=1</ref>.
* The evaporation of the three-north region is reduced by approximately 14% on average, which facilitates the development of local dry farming<ref name=":4">Dai, L., Wang, X., & Wang J. (2000). Indicators to Assess the Ecological Effect of the Three-North Shelterbelt System. ''World Forestry Research'', 13(2), 47-51. Retrieved from http://www.wanfangdata.com.cn/details/detail.do?_type=perio&id=sjlyyj200002013</ref>.
|-
!'''Soil Improvement'''
|
* Soil moisture regulation
* Soil physical properties improvement
* Soil fixation
|
* The soil evaporation has been reduced by 15-20% than the forest network, and the water surface evaporation is reduced by 20-40%<ref name=":4" />. Plant transpiration varies by species, generally reduced by 20-30%<ref name=":4" />.
* The three-north shelterbelt has the function of perfecting the water-soluble constituents of the soil. The proportion of Ca2+ in the soil of shelterbelt has been increased, while that of Na+ has been decreased, which enhances permeability and arability of soil<ref name=":4" />. Trees growing in the shelterbelt have the ability to absorb salt, such as poplars, willows, sorghum, etc.
* Taking the Loess Plateau as an example, when the vegetation coverage is 20-40%, it has a significant effect on reducing soil erosion<ref name=":0" />.
|-
!'''Increasing Agriculture Productivity'''
|
* Crop production improvement
|
* The ecological environment of farmland has been enhanced by the effect above, promoting crop growth and yield. Corn and rice yields rates have increased by 14% and 15% respectively<ref name=":4" />. The emergence of corn seedlings has been 2~3 days in advance, and the maturity period is 4~5 days early<ref name=":4" />.
|}

== The Evidence for the Problem ==
Sources, their relevance and reliability, balance of argument (for and against), bias declared or inferred;

=== Ecological problems ===

==== Violate the health living principles ====
To reach the long-term goals, the Green Great Wall Project followed a principle called "easy before difficult, from near to far"<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal|last=Mao|first=Rixin|last2=Chen|first2=Gang|last3=Zhang|first3=Shaoqiang|date=2017|title=三北防护林工程建设中若干问题及应对建议|trans-title=Some Problems and Countermeasures in the Construction of Three-North Shelter Forest Project|url=|journal=Protection Forest Science and Technology|volume=|issue=|pages=58-61|doi=10.13601/j.issn.1005-5215.2017.10.020|via=CNKI}}</ref>. In other words, the process of afforestation first started from the areas with easy living condition, then moved to the areas with tough living condition. However, with the step-by-step promotion of afforestation, the relatively easy parts of the project have already completed. The rest are mostly left because of their poor natural conditions, inconvenient transportation, and bare of humanity<ref name=":3" />. The poor site conditions vastly decrease the growth rate, survival rate, and preservation rate of afforestation.

Much worse, people who involved in the project only pay attention to seeking quick success and instant benefits of the project, ignoring to put the right tree at the right place. In some cases, shrubs are more suitable in some arid and water-scarce desert areas rather than trees like the poplar and spruce. Large amount of water absorbed by long roots of trees as well as the added water evaporation by large leaves will aggravate the shortage of water resources in the region<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Sun|first=Guili|last2=Li|first2=Xiaona|last3=Wang|first3=Dong|date=2007|title=“三北”防护林建设中若干问题的生态思考|trans-title=The Ecological Thinking of the Three - North Forest Shelterbelt Program|url=http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFQ&dbname=CJFD2007&filename=XJSZ200703070&uid=WEEvREcwSlJHSldRa1FhdkJkVG1CcDNkZVhQKzkxOHpDTWVFeUVCSFpKOD0=$9A4hF_YAuvQ5obgVAqNKPCYcEjKensW4IQMovwHtwkF4VYPoHbKxJw!!&v=MDA2OTRxVHJXTTFGckNVUkxPZlpPZHJGaURsVjd6TlBTZllkTEc0SHRiTXJJOUNaSVI4ZVgxTHV4WVM3RGgxVDM=|journal=Journal of Xinjiang Normal University (Natural Sciences Edition)|volume=26|pages=217-219|issn=1008-9659|via=CNKI}}</ref>. Hence, planting too much arbors in arid and water-deficient desert areas will not achieve good results diametrically. Under this circumstance, the ecological functions have been sharply diminished.

==== Low level of biodiversity ====
Biodiversity plays a significant role in ecosystems which directly influences the ecological processes. High level of biodiversity can increase the ecological functioning while low level of biodiversity decreases the efficiency of ecological communities to capture biologically essential resources, produce biomass, decompose and recycle biologically essential nutrients<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=|title=Biodiversity Loss and Its Impact on Humanity|url=|journal=|volume=|pages=|via=}}</ref>.

Low level of biodiversity has acted as a long-term ecological problem in the Green Great Wall since it has been put into implemented. In the early stage of the project, a large number of pure artificial forests with high survival rate or fast-growing tree species were planted. Those pieces of forests only contain one specific species such as poplar and willow, which can bring enormous economic benefits from forestry production, and improve forestry management efficiency in short period. However, this kind of forest pattern results in simple forest structure with less mixed tree species and more same-age forest stands, which indicates the low level of biological diversity. Meanwhile, the lower level of biodiversity is accompanied by the weaker resilience of the forests. Those artificial forests are extremely easy to be infected by diseases and pests, and it can cause extensive damage once infected<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Jiang|first=Fengqi|last2=Zhu|first2=Jiaojun|date=2002|title=防护林阶段定向经营研究|trans-title=Phase-directional Management of Protective Plantations|url=http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFQ&dbname=CJFD2002&filename=YYSB200210033&v=MTg0MzFOcjQ5R1o0UjhlWDFMdXhZUzdEaDFUM3FUcldNMUZyQ1VSTE9mWk9kckZpRGdWcjNKUERUWWJMRzRIdFA=|journal=Chinese Journal of Applied Ecology|volume=13|pages=1352-1355|doi=10.13287/j.1001-9332.2002.0310|via=CNKI}}</ref>. For example, more than 130,000 pure poplars in Yongdeng County, Gansu Province has been destroyed by longicore since the end of the 20th century<ref name=":3" />.

==== Stand degradation ====
Limited by the development of economy and technology at the early stage, the quality of the artificial forest stands is generally low, followed by large scale of stand aging. Started from the 1970s, the action of afforestation has led to the existence of a great amount of mature forests, taking a relatively large proportion of overall tree number<ref name=":3" />. When forests reach the overripening stage, the functions of the project decline due to the slow-down growth speed and reduced biomass of the forests<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bu|first=Jun|date=2016|title=辽宁省退化防护林现状及成因分析|trans-title=Present Situation and Cause of Formation of Degraded Shelterbelt in Liaoning Province|url=http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFQ&dbname=CJFDLAST2016&filename=FHLK201606040&uid=WEEvREcwSlJHSldRa1FhdkJkVG1CcDNkZVhQN0Y4Q3lVMldDcmdHOTZjRT0=$9A4hF_YAuvQ5obgVAqNKPCYcEjKensW4IQMovwHtwkF4VYPoHbKxJw!!&v=MDU5NDk5Zk1xWTlCWklSOGVYMUx1eFlTN0RoMVQzcVRyV00xRnJDVVJMT2ZaT2RyRmlEaFZMck1JeVhIWmJHNEg=|journal=Protection Forest Science and Technology|volume=|pages=101-102|doi=10.13601/j.issn.1005-5215.2016.06.040|via=}}</ref>. Therefore, the stand aging accelerates the speed of stand degradation.

In addition, some places blindly pursue the quantity of afforestation while neglect the stand quality, regardless of the natural mechanisms and the priority of ecological benefits. As a consequence, the situation of stand degradation tends to be more severe, affecting the overall effectiveness of the project to move forward smoothly.

=== Social and financial problems ===

==== Lack of public participation ====
The Green Great Wall Project started at 1970s when Chinese Economic Reform occurred<ref>Zhu, J., Zhou, X., & Hu, J. (2004). Thinking and prospect of "three north" shelterbelt system project. ''Journal of natural resources'', 19(1), 79-85.</ref> . The Economic Reform stimulated public’s enthusiasm to do what government told them to do<ref>Wu, Q. (2009). The changing track of patriotic expression of young students in the 30 years of reform and opening up. ''Chinese youth studies,'' 1.</ref> . Moreover, people did not have many choices to earn money while agriculture is the main industry. The project was attractive because participant could get relatively considerable profits and subsides. Therefore, local communities were willing to join in the project and plant trees, and the first stage of great wall project was successfully done. However, after the soaring of economy in 1990s, people were no longer unsatisfied with the profits of growing trees when they have more choices<ref name=":5">Zhang, J. (1996). Achievements and problems in the construction of "three north" shelterbelt system. Retrieved from http://www.cnki.com.cn/Article/CJFDTotal-LYJJ199602001</ref> . With the deepening of reform, farmers' interest in afforestation, especially shelterbelt, begun to decline. The connection between shelterbelt and farmers' profit stream was not as close as in the early stage, which was inconsistent with the goal of farmers' rapid income growth<ref name=":5" />. Some of the preferential policies originally formulated were no longer attractive to the masses, and farmers have gained greater choice and corresponding preferential policies from the reform.

==== Lack of funding ====
The conflict between the government’s expectation and people’s interests has become increasingly clear since 1990s<ref name=":5" />. The project is a large-scale public welfare undertaking which gives priority to protection and concern on environment. And public have main purpose on making money. As a developing country, government had financial problems. Funding was inadequate from the beginning of the project. Individual could only get fifty-one Yuan as pension after they afforestation one hectare<ref name=":5" /> . Farmers preferred to give priority to the projects with large benefits and quick results. Also, because most of forests in project were shelterbelt which could not bring much economic benefits, people are not willing to get involved in the project. Instead, they relatively preferred to grow economic forests.

==== Inappropriate management system ====
The role of the management system should not be underestimated. However, with the deepening of the reform, the government system that used to play the overall function has been changed. Some local forestry departments were merged, and some local organizations were cut off the financial support. Those organizations were forced to make live with other stuffs which might be illegal and negative to the project. For instance, those local organizations would authorize an already forested area as project area to get pension. While they would not build up shelterbelt. Therefore, the foundation of the management system became unstable, and its function was weakened.

== Recommendations ==
* '''Improve biodiversity'''
* '''Improve stand structure stability'''
# The newly planted forest should focus on selecting native tree species with good stability. Also, introducing suitable exotic plants with equivalent or similar niche can be one solution as an important supplement to native tree species.
# Improve the ratio of mixed stand by allocating various species. First, the stand structure should be planted combining with different layers from trees, shrubs, to grass. Secondly, it should include both conifers and broad-leaf species as well as general-growing tree species with fast-growing tree species.
* '''Policy for modern conditions'''
<blockquote>Since China's reform, the process of policy design has been constantly promoted along with changes in the situation. When the promotion effect of a policy decreases due to changes in the objective environment. New policies should be issued accordingly, either to strengthen the effect of the original policy or to produce new effects.</blockquote>
* '''Suited to Local Conditions'''
<blockquote>One-fit-all model will lead Three-North Shelterbelt Program to failure and it is also one of the main causes of current problems. Therefore, different governance modes and regional governance methods should be selected according to the resource advantages and governance status quo of different regions.</blockquote>
*'''Enhance economic efficiency'''
<blockquote>It is an effective approach to stimulate the constructors' enthusiasm and initiative through enhance the economic attraction of the project itself. While governments focus on improving the ecological environment, they should also promote the economic benefits from project, such as setting up green industry and developing sand tourism, to help project out of the wood.</blockquote>
*'''Apply multiple conservation mechanisms'''
# Build up Ecosystem payment system
<blockquote>People would have opportunity lost when they decide to be involved in Three-North Shelter Forest Program. To ensure people will not avoid project because of their lost, governments should establish ES payment to compensate those people who pay for ecological benefits.</blockquote>2. Community-based forest conservation <blockquote>China's Green Great Wall is a vast construction project that involves different groups of stakeholders. To address the exist problems, </blockquote>

== Conclusion ==
You should conclude your Wiki paper by summarizing the topic, or some aspect of the topic, as if possible, state a policy recommendation.

== References ==
Please use the Wikipedia reference style (see Wikipedia:Inline citation). Provide a citation for every sentence, statement, thought, or bit of data not your own, giving the author, year, AND page (when using direct quotes).
For dictionary references for English-language terms, I strongly recommend you use the Oxford English Dictionary. You can reference foreign-language sources but please also provide translations into English.

<references />

{{Projectbox CONS200|names=Lauren Chen; Hongkai Qiu; Lingsen Kong; Yixuan Yu|share=yes}}

[[Category:Conservation]]

Course:CONS200/2019/Ecological Benefits and Costs of China's Green Great Wall

2019-03-14T02:26:02Z

YIXUANYU: /* Stand degradation */

[[File:Green_Great_Wall.jpg|thumb|440x440px|Green Great Wall in Pinglu Qipan Mountains]]
Green Great Wall, or Three-North Shelter Forest Program, or Three-North Shelterbelt Program, is a sequence of artificial shelter forests in northwestern, northeastern, and northeastern regions of China.<ref name=":2">Meng, F. (2014). The Significance and Role of the Green Great Wall Construction. New Countryside: ''Heilongjiang''(8), 305-305. doi:10.3969/j.issn.1674-8409.2014.08.305 </ref> It starts ranging from Binxian County in Heilongjiang Province in the east to Wusongbeili Mountain in Xinjiang in the west, and from the northern border in the north to Hai River, Yongding River, Wei River and Tao River, Burhan Budai Mountain.<ref name=":2" /> The construction of the Green Great Wall covers 551 counties (flags, cities, and districts) in 13 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government) with a total area of 4.069 million hectares, accounting for 42.4% of the country's land area.<ref name=":2" /> Among these aras, there are 12 Gobi, deserts and sand lands with an area of 133,000 km, as well as 0.367 million hectares Loess Plateau that has severe soil erosion, sparse vegetation and lots of gullies.<ref name=":2" />

The project began in 1979 and its planning period is 70 years.<ref name=":1">Three-North Shelterbelt Program. (2019). In ''Baidupedia''. The Great Wall Project. Retrieved on February 11, 2019, from https://baike.baidu.com/item/“三北”防护林工/11046362?fromtitle=%E4%B8%89%E5%8C%97%E9%98%B2%E6%8A%A4%E6%9E%97&fromid=1845823#reference-%5B4%5D-695089-wrap </ref> By 2050, the planned afforestation area will be 535 million hectares, and the forest coverage rate in these three regions will increase from 5.05% in 1979 to 15.95% in 2050.<ref name=":1" /> Until 2018, the afforestation area has been completed to 30.149 million hectares, and the forest coverage rate of the project area has increased to 13.59%.<ref name=":1" /> At present, China’s Green Great Wall has gained great ecological achievement but has generated a great number of financial costs. Meanwhile, various problems have emerged and impeded the project to proceed, in terms of ecology, finance, policy, and society. Those existing problems will be discussed, and recommendations that correspond with different aspects will be suggested.

== Categories of Actors ==
Balalalalalal hahahahha

== Ecological Benefits ==
{| class="wikitable"
|+
!
!Effects
!Statistics
|-
!'''Regional Climate Regulation'''
|
* Wind preventing
* Temperature regulation
* Air moisture regulation
|
* According to the measurements of three-north regions, the effective distance of the forest belt to reduce the wind speed is about 20~25 times higher than the height of the forest belt, and the wind speed is reduced by 27~40%.<ref name=":0">Huang, L., Zhu, P., Xiao, T., Cao, Y., & Gong, G. (2018). Wind and Sand Fixation Effect of the Green Great Wall System Construction Project in the Past 35 Years. ''Geography Science'', 38(4), 600-609. Retrieved from http://xueshu.baidu.com/usercenter/paper/show?paperid=353eec52dc01bd2ae65e6c1e5d2c8873&site=xueshu_se </ref>
|-
!'''Soil Improvement'''
|
* Soil moisture regulation
* Soil physical properties improvement
* Soil and water fixation
|
|-
!'''Increasing Land Productivity'''
|
* Ecological environment improvement
* Crop production improvement
|
|}

== The evidence for the problem ==
Sources, their relevance and reliability, balance of argument (for and against), bias declared or inferred;

=== Ecology ===

==== Violate the health living principles ====
To reach the long-term goals, the Green Great Wall Project followed a principle called "easy before difficult, from near to far"<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal|last=Mao|first=Rixin|last2=Chen|first2=Gang|last3=Zhang|first3=Shaoqiang|date=2017|title=三北防护林工程建设中若干问题及应对建议|trans-title=Some Problems and Countermeasures in the Construction of Three-North Shelter Forest Project|url=|journal=Protection Forest Science and Technology|volume=|issue=|pages=58-61|doi=10.13601/j.issn.1005-5215.2017.10.020|via=CNKI}}</ref>. In other words, the process of afforestation first started from the areas with easy living condition, then moved to the areas with tough living condition. However, with the step-by-step promotion of afforestation, the relatively easy parts of the project have already completed. The rest are mostly left because of their poor natural conditions, inconvenient transportation, and bare of humanity<ref name=":3" />. The poor site conditions vastly decrease the growth rate, survival rate, and preservation rate of afforestation.

Much worse, people who involved in the project only pay attention to seeking quick success and instant benefits of the project, ignoring to put the right tree at the right place. In some cases, shrubs are more suitable in some arid and water-scarce desert areas rather than trees like the poplar and spruce. Large amount of water absorbed by long roots of trees as well as the added water evaporation by large leaves will aggravate the shortage of water resources in the region<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Sun|first=Guili|last2=Li|first2=Xiaona|last3=Wang|first3=Dong|date=2007|title=“三北”防护林建设中若干问题的生态思考|trans-title=The Ecological Thinking of the Three - North Forest Shelterbelt Program|url=http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFQ&dbname=CJFD2007&filename=XJSZ200703070&uid=WEEvREcwSlJHSldRa1FhdkJkVG1CcDNkZVhQKzkxOHpDTWVFeUVCSFpKOD0=$9A4hF_YAuvQ5obgVAqNKPCYcEjKensW4IQMovwHtwkF4VYPoHbKxJw!!&v=MDA2OTRxVHJXTTFGckNVUkxPZlpPZHJGaURsVjd6TlBTZllkTEc0SHRiTXJJOUNaSVI4ZVgxTHV4WVM3RGgxVDM=|journal=Journal of Xinjiang Normal University (Natural Sciences Edition)|volume=26|pages=217-219|issn=1008-9659|via=CNKI}}</ref>. Hence, planting too much arbors in arid and water-deficient desert areas will not achieve good results diametrically. Under this circumstance, the ecological functions have been sharply diminished.

==== Low level of biodiversity ====
Biodiversity plays a significant role in ecosystems which directly influences the ecological processes. High level of biodiversity can increase the ecological functioning while low level of biodiversity decreases the efficiency of ecological communities to capture biologically essential resources, produce biomass, decompose and recycle biologically essential nutrients<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=|title=Biodiversity Loss and Its Impact on Humanity|url=|journal=|volume=|pages=|via=}}</ref>.

Low level of biodiversity has acted as a long-term ecological problem in the Green Great Wall since it has been put into implemented. In the early stage of the project, a large number of pure artificial forests with high survival rate or fast-growing tree species were planted. Those pieces of forests only contain one specific species such as poplar and willow, which can bring enormous economic benefits from forestry production, and improve forestry management efficiency in short period. However, this kind of forest pattern results in simple forest structure with less mixed tree species and more same-age forest stands, which indicates the low level of biological diversity. Meanwhile, the lower level of biodiversity is accompanied by the weaker resilience of the forests. Those artificial forests are extremely easy to be infected by diseases and pests, and it can cause extensive damage once infected<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Jiang|first=Fengqi|last2=Zhu|first2=Jiaojun|date=2002|title=防护林阶段定向经营研究|trans-title=Phase-directional Management of Protective Plantations|url=http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFQ&dbname=CJFD2002&filename=YYSB200210033&v=MTg0MzFOcjQ5R1o0UjhlWDFMdXhZUzdEaDFUM3FUcldNMUZyQ1VSTE9mWk9kckZpRGdWcjNKUERUWWJMRzRIdFA=|journal=Chinese Journal of Applied Ecology|volume=13|pages=1352-1355|doi=10.13287/j.1001-9332.2002.0310|via=CNKI}}</ref>. For example, more than 130,000 pure poplars in Yongdeng County, Gansu Province has been destroyed by longicore since the end of the 20th century<ref name=":3" />.

==== Stand degradation ====
Limited by the development of economy and technology at the early stage, the quality of the artificial forest stands is generally low, followed by large scale of stand aging. Started from the 1970s, the action of afforestation has led to the existence of a great amount of mature forests, taking a relatively large proportion of overall tree number<ref name=":3" />. When forests reach the overripening stage, the functions of the project decline due to the slow-down growth speed and reduced biomass of the forests<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bu|first=Jun|date=2016|title=辽宁省退化防护林现状及成因分析|trans-title=Present Situation and Cause of Formation of Degraded Shelterbelt in Liaoning Province|url=http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFQ&dbname=CJFDLAST2016&filename=FHLK201606040&uid=WEEvREcwSlJHSldRa1FhdkJkVG1CcDNkZVhQN0Y4Q3lVMldDcmdHOTZjRT0=$9A4hF_YAuvQ5obgVAqNKPCYcEjKensW4IQMovwHtwkF4VYPoHbKxJw!!&v=MDU5NDk5Zk1xWTlCWklSOGVYMUx1eFlTN0RoMVQzcVRyV00xRnJDVVJMT2ZaT2RyRmlEaFZMck1JeVhIWmJHNEg=|journal=Protection Forest Science and Technology|volume=|pages=101-102|doi=10.13601/j.issn.1005-5215.2016.06.040|via=}}</ref>. Therefore, the stand aging accelerates the speed of stand degradation.

In addition, some places blindly pursue the quantity of afforestation while neglect the stand quality, regardless of the natural mechanisms and the priority of ecological benefits. As a consequence, the situation of stand degradation tends to be more severe, affecting the overall effectiveness of the project to move forward smoothly.

== Options for remedial action(s) ==
A rationalized and comparative evaluation of options from technical, social, cultural, economic, financial, political, legal points of view (not all of these categories will be relevant to all situations)

== Conclusion ==
You should conclude your Wiki paper by summarizing the topic, or some aspect of the topic, as if possible, state a policy recommendation.

== References ==
Please use the Wikipedia reference style (see Wikipedia:Inline citation). Provide a citation for every sentence, statement, thought, or bit of data not your own, giving the author, year, AND page (when using direct quotes).
For dictionary references for English-language terms, I strongly recommend you use the Oxford English Dictionary. You can reference foreign-language sources but please also provide translations into English.

<references />

{{Projectbox CONS200|names=Lauren Chen; Hongkai Qiu; Lingsen Kong; Yixuan Yu|share=yes}}

[[Category:Conservation]]

Course:CONS200/2019/Ecological Benefits and Costs of China's Green Great Wall

2019-03-14T02:25:20Z

YIXUANYU: /* Low level of biodiversity */

[[File:Green_Great_Wall.jpg|thumb|440x440px|Green Great Wall in Pinglu Qipan Mountains]]
Green Great Wall, or Three-North Shelter Forest Program, or Three-North Shelterbelt Program, is a sequence of artificial shelter forests in northwestern, northeastern, and northeastern regions of China.<ref name=":2">Meng, F. (2014). The Significance and Role of the Green Great Wall Construction. New Countryside: ''Heilongjiang''(8), 305-305. doi:10.3969/j.issn.1674-8409.2014.08.305 </ref> It starts ranging from Binxian County in Heilongjiang Province in the east to Wusongbeili Mountain in Xinjiang in the west, and from the northern border in the north to Hai River, Yongding River, Wei River and Tao River, Burhan Budai Mountain.<ref name=":2" /> The construction of the Green Great Wall covers 551 counties (flags, cities, and districts) in 13 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government) with a total area of 4.069 million hectares, accounting for 42.4% of the country's land area.<ref name=":2" /> Among these aras, there are 12 Gobi, deserts and sand lands with an area of 133,000 km, as well as 0.367 million hectares Loess Plateau that has severe soil erosion, sparse vegetation and lots of gullies.<ref name=":2" />

The project began in 1979 and its planning period is 70 years.<ref name=":1">Three-North Shelterbelt Program. (2019). In ''Baidupedia''. The Great Wall Project. Retrieved on February 11, 2019, from https://baike.baidu.com/item/“三北”防护林工/11046362?fromtitle=%E4%B8%89%E5%8C%97%E9%98%B2%E6%8A%A4%E6%9E%97&fromid=1845823#reference-%5B4%5D-695089-wrap </ref> By 2050, the planned afforestation area will be 535 million hectares, and the forest coverage rate in these three regions will increase from 5.05% in 1979 to 15.95% in 2050.<ref name=":1" /> Until 2018, the afforestation area has been completed to 30.149 million hectares, and the forest coverage rate of the project area has increased to 13.59%.<ref name=":1" /> At present, China’s Green Great Wall has gained great ecological achievement but has generated a great number of financial costs. Meanwhile, various problems have emerged and impeded the project to proceed, in terms of ecology, finance, policy, and society. Those existing problems will be discussed, and recommendations that correspond with different aspects will be suggested.

== Categories of Actors ==
Balalalalalal hahahahha

== Ecological Benefits ==
{| class="wikitable"
|+
!
!Effects
!Statistics
|-
!'''Regional Climate Regulation'''
|
* Wind preventing
* Temperature regulation
* Air moisture regulation
|
* According to the measurements of three-north regions, the effective distance of the forest belt to reduce the wind speed is about 20~25 times higher than the height of the forest belt, and the wind speed is reduced by 27~40%.<ref name=":0">Huang, L., Zhu, P., Xiao, T., Cao, Y., & Gong, G. (2018). Wind and Sand Fixation Effect of the Green Great Wall System Construction Project in the Past 35 Years. ''Geography Science'', 38(4), 600-609. Retrieved from http://xueshu.baidu.com/usercenter/paper/show?paperid=353eec52dc01bd2ae65e6c1e5d2c8873&site=xueshu_se </ref>
|-
!'''Soil Improvement'''
|
* Soil moisture regulation
* Soil physical properties improvement
* Soil and water fixation
|
|-
!'''Increasing Land Productivity'''
|
* Ecological environment improvement
* Crop production improvement
|
|}

== The evidence for the problem ==
Sources, their relevance and reliability, balance of argument (for and against), bias declared or inferred;

=== Ecology ===

==== Violate the health living principles ====
To reach the long-term goals, the Green Great Wall Project followed a principle called "easy before difficult, from near to far"<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal|last=Mao|first=Rixin|last2=Chen|first2=Gang|last3=Zhang|first3=Shaoqiang|date=2017|title=三北防护林工程建设中若干问题及应对建议|trans-title=Some Problems and Countermeasures in the Construction of Three-North Shelter Forest Project|url=|journal=Protection Forest Science and Technology|volume=|issue=|pages=58-61|doi=10.13601/j.issn.1005-5215.2017.10.020|via=CNKI}}</ref>. In other words, the process of afforestation first started from the areas with easy living condition, then moved to the areas with tough living condition. However, with the step-by-step promotion of afforestation, the relatively easy parts of the project have already completed. The rest are mostly left because of their poor natural conditions, inconvenient transportation, and bare of humanity<ref name=":3" />. The poor site conditions vastly decrease the growth rate, survival rate, and preservation rate of afforestation.

Much worse, people who involved in the project only pay attention to seeking quick success and instant benefits of the project, ignoring to put the right tree at the right place. In some cases, shrubs are more suitable in some arid and water-scarce desert areas rather than trees like the poplar and spruce. Large amount of water absorbed by long roots of trees as well as the added water evaporation by large leaves will aggravate the shortage of water resources in the region<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Sun|first=Guili|last2=Li|first2=Xiaona|last3=Wang|first3=Dong|date=2007|title=“三北”防护林建设中若干问题的生态思考|trans-title=The Ecological Thinking of the Three - North Forest Shelterbelt Program|url=http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFQ&dbname=CJFD2007&filename=XJSZ200703070&uid=WEEvREcwSlJHSldRa1FhdkJkVG1CcDNkZVhQKzkxOHpDTWVFeUVCSFpKOD0=$9A4hF_YAuvQ5obgVAqNKPCYcEjKensW4IQMovwHtwkF4VYPoHbKxJw!!&v=MDA2OTRxVHJXTTFGckNVUkxPZlpPZHJGaURsVjd6TlBTZllkTEc0SHRiTXJJOUNaSVI4ZVgxTHV4WVM3RGgxVDM=|journal=Journal of Xinjiang Normal University (Natural Sciences Edition)|volume=26|pages=217-219|issn=1008-9659|via=CNKI}}</ref>. Hence, planting too much arbors in arid and water-deficient desert areas will not achieve good results diametrically. Under this circumstance, the ecological functions have been sharply diminished.

==== Low level of biodiversity ====
Biodiversity plays a significant role in ecosystems which directly influences the ecological processes. High level of biodiversity can increase the ecological functioning while low level of biodiversity decreases the efficiency of ecological communities to capture biologically essential resources, produce biomass, decompose and recycle biologically essential nutrients<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=|title=Biodiversity Loss and Its Impact on Humanity|url=|journal=|volume=|pages=|via=}}</ref>.

Low level of biodiversity has acted as a long-term ecological problem in the Green Great Wall since it has been put into implemented. In the early stage of the project, a large number of pure artificial forests with high survival rate or fast-growing tree species were planted. Those pieces of forests only contain one specific species such as poplar and willow, which can bring enormous economic benefits from forestry production, and improve forestry management efficiency in short period. However, this kind of forest pattern results in simple forest structure with less mixed tree species and more same-age forest stands, which indicates the low level of biological diversity. Meanwhile, the lower level of biodiversity is accompanied by the weaker resilience of the forests. Those artificial forests are extremely easy to be infected by diseases and pests, and it can cause extensive damage once infected<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Jiang|first=Fengqi|last2=Zhu|first2=Jiaojun|date=2002|title=防护林阶段定向经营研究|trans-title=Phase-directional Management of Protective Plantations|url=http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFQ&dbname=CJFD2002&filename=YYSB200210033&v=MTg0MzFOcjQ5R1o0UjhlWDFMdXhZUzdEaDFUM3FUcldNMUZyQ1VSTE9mWk9kckZpRGdWcjNKUERUWWJMRzRIdFA=|journal=Chinese Journal of Applied Ecology|volume=13|pages=1352-1355|doi=10.13287/j.1001-9332.2002.0310|via=CNKI}}</ref>. For example, more than 130,000 pure poplars in Yongdeng County, Gansu Province has been destroyed by longicore since the end of the 20th century<ref name=":3" />.

==== Stand degradation ====
Limited by the development of economy and technology at the early stage, the quality of the artificial forest stands is generally low, followed by large scale of stand aging. Started from the 1970s, the action of afforestation has led to the existence of a great amount of mature forests, taking a relatively large proportion of overall tree number<ref name=":2" />. When forests reach the overripening stage, the functions of the project decline due to the slow-down growth speed and reduced biomass of the forests<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bu|first=Jun|date=2016|title=辽宁省退化防护林现状及成因分析|trans-title=Present Situation and Cause of Formation of Degraded Shelterbelt in Liaoning Province|url=http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFQ&dbname=CJFDLAST2016&filename=FHLK201606040&uid=WEEvREcwSlJHSldRa1FhdkJkVG1CcDNkZVhQN0Y4Q3lVMldDcmdHOTZjRT0=$9A4hF_YAuvQ5obgVAqNKPCYcEjKensW4IQMovwHtwkF4VYPoHbKxJw!!&v=MDU5NDk5Zk1xWTlCWklSOGVYMUx1eFlTN0RoMVQzcVRyV00xRnJDVVJMT2ZaT2RyRmlEaFZMck1JeVhIWmJHNEg=|journal=Protection Forest Science and Technology|volume=|pages=101-102|doi=10.13601/j.issn.1005-5215.2016.06.040|via=}}</ref>. Therefore, the stand aging accelerates the speed of stand degradation.

In addition, some places blindly pursue the quantity of afforestation while neglect the stand quality, regardless of the natural mechanisms and the priority of ecological benefits. As a consequence, the situation of stand degradation tends to be more severe, affecting the overall effectiveness of the project to move forward smoothly.

== Options for remedial action(s) ==
A rationalized and comparative evaluation of options from technical, social, cultural, economic, financial, political, legal points of view (not all of these categories will be relevant to all situations)

== Conclusion ==
You should conclude your Wiki paper by summarizing the topic, or some aspect of the topic, as if possible, state a policy recommendation.

== References ==
Please use the Wikipedia reference style (see Wikipedia:Inline citation). Provide a citation for every sentence, statement, thought, or bit of data not your own, giving the author, year, AND page (when using direct quotes).
For dictionary references for English-language terms, I strongly recommend you use the Oxford English Dictionary. You can reference foreign-language sources but please also provide translations into English.

<references />

{{Projectbox CONS200|names=Lauren Chen; Hongkai Qiu; Lingsen Kong; Yixuan Yu|share=yes}}

[[Category:Conservation]]

Course:CONS200/2019/Ecological Benefits and Costs of China's Green Great Wall

2019-03-14T02:01:26Z

YIXUANYU: /* The evidence for the problem */

[[File:Green_Great_Wall.jpg|thumb|440x440px|Green Great Wall in Pinglu Qipan Mountains]]
Green Great Wall, or Three-North Shelter Forest Program, or Three-North Shelterbelt Program, is a sequence of artificial shelter forests in northwestern, northeastern, and northeastern regions of China.<ref name=":2">Meng, F. (2014). The Significance and Role of the Green Great Wall Construction. New Countryside: ''Heilongjiang''(8), 305-305. doi:10.3969/j.issn.1674-8409.2014.08.305 </ref> It starts ranging from Binxian County in Heilongjiang Province in the east to Wusongbeili Mountain in Xinjiang in the west, and from the northern border in the north to Hai River, Yongding River, Wei River and Tao River, Burhan Budai Mountain.<ref name=":2" /> The construction of the Green Great Wall covers 551 counties (flags, cities, and districts) in 13 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government) with a total area of 4.069 million hectares, accounting for 42.4% of the country's land area.<ref name=":2" /> Among these aras, there are 12 Gobi, deserts and sand lands with an area of 133,000 km, as well as 0.367 million hectares Loess Plateau that has severe soil erosion, sparse vegetation and lots of gullies.<ref name=":2" />

The project began in 1979 and its planning period is 70 years.<ref name=":1">Three-North Shelterbelt Program. (2019). In ''Baidupedia''. The Great Wall Project. Retrieved on February 11, 2019, from https://baike.baidu.com/item/“三北”防护林工/11046362?fromtitle=%E4%B8%89%E5%8C%97%E9%98%B2%E6%8A%A4%E6%9E%97&fromid=1845823#reference-%5B4%5D-695089-wrap </ref> By 2050, the planned afforestation area will be 535 million hectares, and the forest coverage rate in these three regions will increase from 5.05% in 1979 to 15.95% in 2050.<ref name=":1" /> Until 2018, the afforestation area has been completed to 30.149 million hectares, and the forest coverage rate of the project area has increased to 13.59%.<ref name=":1" /> At present, China’s Green Great Wall has gained great ecological achievement but has generated a great number of financial costs. Meanwhile, various problems have emerged and impeded the project to proceed, in terms of ecology, finance, policy, and society. Those existing problems will be discussed, and recommendations that correspond with different aspects will be suggested.

== Categories of Actors ==
Balalalalalal hahahahha

== Ecological Benefits ==
{| class="wikitable"
|+
!
!Effects
!Statistics
|-
!'''Regional Climate Regulation'''
|
* Wind preventing
* Temperature regulation
* Air moisture regulation
|
* According to the measurements of three-north regions, the effective distance of the forest belt to reduce the wind speed is about 20~25 times higher than the height of the forest belt, and the wind speed is reduced by 27~40%.<ref name=":0">Huang, L., Zhu, P., Xiao, T., Cao, Y., & Gong, G. (2018). Wind and Sand Fixation Effect of the Green Great Wall System Construction Project in the Past 35 Years. ''Geography Science'', 38(4), 600-609. Retrieved from http://xueshu.baidu.com/usercenter/paper/show?paperid=353eec52dc01bd2ae65e6c1e5d2c8873&site=xueshu_se </ref>
|-
!'''Soil Improvement'''
|
* Soil moisture regulation
* Soil physical properties improvement
* Soil and water fixation
|
|-
!'''Increasing Land Productivity'''
|
* Ecological environment improvement
* Crop production improvement
|
|}

== The evidence for the problem ==
Sources, their relevance and reliability, balance of argument (for and against), bias declared or inferred;

=== Ecology ===

==== Violate the health living principles ====
To reach the long-term goals, the Green Great Wall Project followed a principle called "easy before difficult, from near to far". In other words, the process of afforestation first started from the areas with easy living condition, then moved to the areas with tough living condition. However, with the step-by-step promotion of afforestation, the relatively easy parts of the project have already completed. The rest are mostly left because of their poor natural conditions, inconvenient transportation, and bare of humanity. The poor site conditions vastly decrease the growth rate, survival rate, and preservation rate of afforestation.

Much worse, people who involved in the project only pay attention to seeking quick success and instant benefits of the project, ignoring to put the right tree at the right place. For example, shrubs are more suitable in some arid and water-scarce desert areas rather than trees like the poplar and spruce. Large amount of water absorbed by long roots of trees as well as the added water evaporation by large leaves will aggravate the shortage of water resources in the region<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Sun|first=Guili|last2=Li|first2=Xiaona|last3=Wang|first3=Dong|date=2007|title=“三北”防护林建设中若干问题的生态思考|trans-title=The Ecological Thinking of the Three - North Forest Shelterbelt Program|url=http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFQ&dbname=CJFD2007&filename=XJSZ200703070&uid=WEEvREcwSlJHSldRa1FhdkJkVG1CcDNkZVhQKzkxOHpDTWVFeUVCSFpKOD0=$9A4hF_YAuvQ5obgVAqNKPCYcEjKensW4IQMovwHtwkF4VYPoHbKxJw!!&v=MDA2OTRxVHJXTTFGckNVUkxPZlpPZHJGaURsVjd6TlBTZllkTEc0SHRiTXJJOUNaSVI4ZVgxTHV4WVM3RGgxVDM=|journal=Journal of Xinjiang Normal University (Natural Sciences Edition)|volume=26|pages=217-219|issn=1008-9659|via=CNKI}}</ref>. Hence, planting too much arbors in arid and water-deficient desert areas will not achieve good results diametrically. In this case, the ecological functions have been sharply diminished.

==== Low level of biodiversity ====
Biodiversity plays a significant role in ecosystems which directly influences the ecological processes. High level of biodiversity can increase the ecological functioning while low level of biodiversity decreases the efficiency of ecological communities to capture biologically essential resources, produce biomass, decompose and recycle biologically essential nutrients<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=|title=Biodiversity Loss and Its Impact on Humanity|url=|journal=|volume=|pages=|via=}}</ref>.

Low level of biodiversity has acted as a long-term ecological problem in the Green Great Wall since it has been put into implemented. In the early stage of the project, a large number of pure artificial forests with high survival rate or fast-growing tree species were planted. Those pieces of forests only contain one specific species such as poplar and willow, which can bring enormous economic benefits from forestry production, and improve forestry management efficiency in short period. However, this kind of forest pattern results in simple forest structure with less mixed tree species and more same-age forest stands, which indicates the low level of biological diversity. Meanwhile, the lower level of biodiversity is accompanied by the weaker resilience of the forests. Those artificial forests are extremely easy to be infected by diseases and pests, and it can cause extensive damage once infected<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Jiang|first=Fengqi|last2=Zhu|first2=Jiaojun|date=2002|title=防护林阶段定向经营研究|trans-title=Phase-directional Management of Protective Plantations|url=http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFQ&dbname=CJFD2002&filename=YYSB200210033&v=MTg0MzFOcjQ5R1o0UjhlWDFMdXhZUzdEaDFUM3FUcldNMUZyQ1VSTE9mWk9kckZpRGdWcjNKUERUWWJMRzRIdFA=|journal=Chinese Journal of Applied Ecology|volume=13|pages=1352-1355|doi=10.13287/j.1001-9332.2002.0310|via=CNKI}}</ref>. For example, more than 130,000 pure poplars in Yongdeng County, Gansu Province has been destroyed by longicore since the end of the 20th century<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Mao|first=Rixin|last2=Chen|first2=Gang|last3=Zhang|first3=Shaoqiang|date=2017|title=三北防护林工程建设中若干问题及应对建议|trans-title=Some Problems and Countermeasures in the Construction of Three-North Shelter Forest Project|url=|journal=Protection Forest Science and Technology|issue=|pages=58-61|doi=10.13601/j.issn.1005-5215.2017.10.020|via=CNKI}}</ref>.

==== Stand degradation ====
Limited by the development of economy and technology at the early stage, the quality of the artificial forest stands is generally low, followed by large scale of stand aging. Started from the 1970s, the action of afforestation has led to the existence of a great amount of mature forests, taking a relatively large proportion of overall tree number<ref name=":2" />. When forests reach the overripening stage, the functions of the project decline due to the slow-down growth speed and reduced biomass of the forests<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bu|first=Jun|date=2016|title=辽宁省退化防护林现状及成因分析|trans-title=Present Situation and Cause of Formation of Degraded Shelterbelt in Liaoning Province|url=http://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFQ&dbname=CJFDLAST2016&filename=FHLK201606040&uid=WEEvREcwSlJHSldRa1FhdkJkVG1CcDNkZVhQN0Y4Q3lVMldDcmdHOTZjRT0=$9A4hF_YAuvQ5obgVAqNKPCYcEjKensW4IQMovwHtwkF4VYPoHbKxJw!!&v=MDU5NDk5Zk1xWTlCWklSOGVYMUx1eFlTN0RoMVQzcVRyV00xRnJDVVJMT2ZaT2RyRmlEaFZMck1JeVhIWmJHNEg=|journal=Protection Forest Science and Technology|volume=|pages=101-102|doi=10.13601/j.issn.1005-5215.2016.06.040|via=}}</ref>. Therefore, the stand aging accelerates the speed of stand degradation.

In addition, some places blindly pursue the quantity of afforestation while neglect the stand quality, regardless of the natural mechanisms and the priority of ecological benefits. As a consequence, the situation of stand degradation tends to be more severe, affecting the overall effectiveness of the project to move forward smoothly.

== Options for remedial action(s) ==
A rationalized and comparative evaluation of options from technical, social, cultural, economic, financial, political, legal points of view (not all of these categories will be relevant to all situations)

== Conclusion ==
You should conclude your Wiki paper by summarizing the topic, or some aspect of the topic, as if possible, state a policy recommendation.

== References ==
Please use the Wikipedia reference style (see Wikipedia:Inline citation). Provide a citation for every sentence, statement, thought, or bit of data not your own, giving the author, year, AND page (when using direct quotes).
For dictionary references for English-language terms, I strongly recommend you use the Oxford English Dictionary. You can reference foreign-language sources but please also provide translations into English.

<references />

{{Projectbox CONS200|names=Lauren Chen; Hongkai Qiu; Lingsen Kong; Yixuan Yu|share=yes}}

[[Category:Conservation]]

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-12-04T21:29:12Z

YIXUANYU:

This case study examines the community-based forest management and the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Wuping county, Longyan city, Fujian province, China. It uses various documents to develop a timeline about how Jiewen village, the first experimental unit in Fujian, makes great achievements of the collective forest tenure reform. The village chief, the village council, the local communities, the local governments, and the state governments cooperate tightly to clarify forest rights for the community including forestland ownership, management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct. With the description of different stakeholders, the case study discusses and assesses the achievements and deficiencies of the collective forest tenure reform and collective forest management by Jiewen’s people. Meanwhile, the under-forest economy will also be discussed in this case study. Some recommendations will also be attached at last.

== Description ==
[[File:ChinaFujianLongyan.png|thumb|Longyan, Fujian, China
]]

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting, marketing timber products, and under-forest economy for better livelihoods of the community. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistributed the collective forests and clarified forest rights for villagers. Compared with other places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four significant changes (Zhao, 2017). In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007). At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002), People’s Communes disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on some issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981), the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of the forest is collectively owned, and 14% is reserved for the state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are divided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a specific piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002).

However, the unified management of collective forests continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, and then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the collective community income, as a result of which the farmers do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department was sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017) mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide industrial materials was decreased from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017). In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in the 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as the establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state-owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)
== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017), he interviewed Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is a villager whose subsistence entirely rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In the 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers tough to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to be at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which seven were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)

=== A Favorable Turn - The Customary Forest Rights Through The Local Forestry Management ===
[[File:龙岩市 - City of Longyan - 2016.09 - panoramio.jpg|thumb|
City of Longyan
]]
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

In order to start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there were no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businesspeople. Therefore, FDFP required the village first to average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Eventually, the Village Council divided the collective forests into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, making sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, Li Guilin received the first new forest certificate, in which the forest ownership and a bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct were clarified.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
There were 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village (Li, X., 2017). Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village Council and villagers came with consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through a paid-use system in the condition of constant usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy (Zhou, J., 2009).
# Villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or the future have the property rights. The group of people does not need to pay fees to the village council.
# The Village Council charges villagers if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in the village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016) defined that the under-forest economy is to improve the overall utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016):
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016), the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan (Lin, 2016).

==Stakeholders Analysis ==
Based on the development of the collective forests in Jiewen, the power and interest levels for stakeholders are listed below.
{| class="wikitable"
!High power
Low interest
!High power
High interest
|-
|
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''
|
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
|-
!Low power
High interest
!Low power
Low interest
|-
|
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop the under-forest economy'''

* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
|
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''Foresters'''
|}

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the state government recognized the collective forest tenure reform, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people is entitled to the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since Jiewen's people collectively own the forests, households do not have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected from different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they do not only serve for the higher level of authorities but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, the village chief is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
The groups of people listed below are not directly affected by the collective forest management in Jiewen, but play indispensable roles in the entire process.
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

== Discussion & Assessment ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009).

First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in the new model of the collective forest management, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period.

Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degradation and boosted the community forest security.

Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders. The under-forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform. It provides new opportunities and great potential for the development of collective forestry in Jiewen.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis, and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. In the same year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council enacted the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development as a beginning of paying attention to the collective forest system. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country in 2008 through the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform (Central Committee of the CPC & State Council, 2008). It displayed a similar structure with Jiewen's model which can be summarized as the redistribution of the forest ownership, the management rights, the disposal rights and the usufruct (Zhang et al., 2011).

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014), about 60% of the forests in China are collectively owned, and the rest are state-owned. However, the proportion of forest stock by the collective forests are just around 37%, weighing much less than the state forests compared to the forest ownership match ratio. It shows that the quality of the collective forests needs improve in an extended period.

Following the criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen and other communities still need to confront with difficulties of collective forest co-management. The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (SFA, 2014) shows that the problem of deforestation in some areas is still severe with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization. It illustrates that some communities have not realized the essential of the under-forest economy which benefits the socio-economic development and forest resources conservation. Combined with current situation, China has a really top-down political system. Mostly, if the highest government make a decision, the lower level administrations have to follow the order. It forms an efficient system to promote the policies but reversely lead to lacking the involvement of people in the bottom.

On the other hand, the unclear concept of the forest rights still causes issues. Accoring to L. Zhang (2010), there is no completed and specific enactment concerning the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism. As a core in forestry, the forest rights should be a legal concept while it is more often used with unclear directions in a policy term (Zhang, L., 2010). Meanwhile, the legal rationality is also insufficient, current series of logical problems. To some extent, these have led to enormous obstacles to the connection between China's forest tenure reform policy and relevant legislation. Based on the current practice, the forest right can be defined as a limited concept targeting the utilization right and the usufruct of forests.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers: Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the community-based collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming, and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches to eveloping new forms of forestry economy.

* Village council: Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique. They also need to consider a scheduled timetable for the regulated meeting.
* Foresters: Gain advanced knowledge and technology for improving the quality and quantity of the collective forests.

* Local governments: Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

* Forest Departments: Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

* State Government: Strengthen legislation system for forest rights. Reduce the taxes and fees for the communities in forestry developement.

== References ==
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council. (2008). 中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见[Opinions on comprehensively promoting the collective forest tenure reform]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html</nowiki>.

Jiewencun. 2018, May 1. In ''Baidubaike''. Retrieved October 22, 2018, from <nowiki>https://baike.baidu.com/item</nowiki>.

Li, X. (2017). “林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]. Retrieved from <nowiki>https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707</nowiki>.

Lin, C. (2016). 武平县林下经济发展状况研究[Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County]. ''现代商贸工业, 34'', 50-51. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026</nowiki>.

Lu, W., Landell-Mills, N., Liu, J., Xu, J., Liu, C. (2002). Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China. London: International Institute for Environment and Development. <nowiki>https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting</nowiki>.

Menzies, N. K. (2007). ''Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.'' New York: Columbia University Press.

State Forestry Administration. (1981).关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on several issues concerning the protection of forest and development of forestry]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx</nowiki>?.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived from <nowiki>http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html</nowiki>.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). The eighth national forest resource inventory results. Beijing: The forest resource management, pp. 1-2. <nowiki>http://doi.org/10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001</nowiki>.

Xie, Y., Gong, P., Han, X., & Wen, Y. (2014). The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity? ''Journal of forest economics, 20''(2), 126-140. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001</nowiki>.

Zhang, L. (2010). Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights]. ''Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition), 10''(1), 87-92. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015</nowiki>.

Zhang, X., Xie, Y., Wen, Y., & Li, H. (2011). Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China. ''World forestry research, 24''(2), 64–69. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212</nowiki>.

Zhao, P. (2017). 武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County]. Retrieved October 28, 2018, from <nowiki>http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html</nowiki>.

Zhou, J. (2009). 武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价[Analyze the mode of the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village]. ''Green finance and accounting, 4,'' 40-41. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004</nowiki>.

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=Yu Yixuan (Joyce)
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-28T04:48:46Z

YIXUANYU: /* A Favorable Turn */

This case study examines the community-based forest management and the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Wuping county, Longyan city, Fujian province, China. It uses various documents to develop a timeline about how Jiewen village, the first experimental unit in Fujian, makes great achievements of the collective forest tenure reform. The village chief, the village council, the local communities, the local governments, and the state governments cooperate tightly to clarify forest rights for the community including forestland ownership, management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct. With the description of different stakeholders, the case study discusses and assesses the achievements and deficiencies of the collective forest tenure reform and collective forest management by Jiewen’s people. Meanwhile, the under-forest economy will also be discussed in this case study. Some recommendations will also be attached at last.

== Description ==
[[File:ChinaFujianLongyan.png|thumb|Longyan, Fujian, China
]]

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting, marketing timber products, and under-forest economy for better livelihoods of the community. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistributed the collective forests and clarified forest rights for villagers. Compared with other places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four significant changes (Zhao, 2017). In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007). At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002), People’s Communes disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on some issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981), the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of the forest is collectively owned, and 14% is reserved for the state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are divided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a specific piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002).

However, the unified management of collective forests continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, and then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the collective community income, as a result of which the farmers do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department was sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017) mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide industrial materials was decreased from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017). In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in the 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as the establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state-owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)
== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017), he interviewed Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is a villager whose subsistence entirely rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In the 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers tough to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to be at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which seven were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)

=== A Favorable Turn - The Customary Forest Rights Through The Local Forestry Management ===
[[File:龙岩市 - City of Longyan - 2016.09 - panoramio.jpg|thumb|
City of Longyan
]]
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

In order to start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there were no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businesspeople. Therefore, FDFP required the village first to average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Eventually, the Village Council divided the collective forests into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, making sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, Li Guilin received the first new forest certificate, in which the forest ownership and a bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct were clarified.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
There were 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village (Li, X., 2017). Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village Council and villagers came with consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through a paid-use system in the condition of constant usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy (Zhou, J., 2009).
# Villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or the future have the property rights. The group of people does not need to pay fees to the village council.
# The Village Council charges villagers if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in the village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016) defined that the under-forest economy is to improve the overall utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016):
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016), the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan (Lin, 2016).

==Stakeholders Analysis ==
Based on the development of the collective forests in Jiewen, the power and interest levels for stakeholders are listed below.
{| class="wikitable"
!High power
Low interest
!High power
High interest
|-
|
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''
|
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
|-
!Low power
High interest
!Low power
Low interest
|-
|
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop the under-forest economy'''

* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
|
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''Foresters'''
|}

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the state government recognized the collective forest tenure reform, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people is entitled to the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since Jiewen's people collectively own the forests, households do not have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected from different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they do not only serve for the higher level of authorities but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, the village chief is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
The groups of people listed below are not directly affected by the collective forest management in Jiewen, but play indispensable roles in the entire process.
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

== Discussion & Assessment ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009).

First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in the new model of the collective forest management, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period.

Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degradation and boosted the community forest security.

Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders. The under-forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform. It provides new opportunities and great potential for the development of collective forestry in Jiewen.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis, and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. In the same year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council enacted the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development as a beginning of paying attention to the collective forest system. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country in 2008 through the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform (Central Committee of the CPC & State Council, 2008). It displayed a similar structure with Jiewen's model which can be summarized as the redistribution of the forest ownership, the management rights, the disposal rights and the usufruct (Zhang et al., 2011).

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014), about 60% of the forests in China are collectively owned, and the rest are state-owned. However, the proportion of forest stock by the collective forests are just around 37%, weighing much less than the state forests compared to the forest ownership match ratio. It shows that the quality of the collective forests needs improve in an extended period.

Following the criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen and other communities still need to confront with difficulties of collective forest co-management. The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (SFA, 2014) shows that the problem of deforestation in some areas is still severe with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization. It illustrates that some communities have not realized the essential of the under-forest economy which benefits the socio-economic development and forest resources conservation. Combined with current situation, China has a really top-down political system. Mostly, if the highest government make a decision, the lower level administrations have to follow the order. It forms an efficient system to promote the policies but reversely lead to lacking the involvement of people in the bottom.

On the other hand, the unclear concept of the forest rights still causes issues. Accoring to L. Zhang (2010), there is no completed and specific enactment concerning the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism. As a core in forestry, the forest rights should be a legal concept while it is more often used with unclear directions in a policy term (Zhang, L., 2010). Meanwhile, the legal rationality is also insufficient, current series of logical problems. To some extent, these have led to enormous obstacles to the connection between China's forest tenure reform policy and relevant legislation. Based on the current practice, the forest right can be defined as a limited concept targeting the utilization right and the usufruct of forests.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers: Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the community-based collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming, and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches to eveloping new forms of forestry economy.

* Village council: Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique. They also need to consider a scheduled timetable for the regulated meeting.
* Foresters: Gain advanced knowledge and technology for improving the quality and quantity of the collective forests.

* Local governments: Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

* Forest Departments: Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

* State Government: Strengthen legislation system for forest rights. Reduce the taxes and fees for the communities in forestry developement.

== References ==
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council. (2008). 中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见[Opinions on comprehensively promoting the collective forest tenure reform]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html</nowiki>.

Jiewencun. 2018, May 1. In Baidubaike. Retrieved October 22, 2018, from <nowiki>https://baike.baidu.com/item</nowiki>.

Li, X. (2017). “林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]. Retrieved from <nowiki>https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707</nowiki>.

Lin, C. (2016). 武平县林下经济发展状况研究[Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County]. 现代商贸工业, 34, 50-51. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026</nowiki>.

Lu, W., Landell-Mills, N., Liu, J., Xu, J., Liu, C. (2002). Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China. London: International Institute for Environment and Development. <nowiki>https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting</nowiki>.

Menzies, N. K. (2007). Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management. New York: Columbia University Press.

State Forestry Administration. (1981).关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on several issues concerning the protection of forest and development of forestry]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx</nowiki>?.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived from <nowiki>http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html</nowiki>.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). The eighth national forest resource inventory results. Beijing: The forest resource management, pp. 1-2. <nowiki>http://doi.org/10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001</nowiki>.

Xie, Y., Gong, P., Han, X., & Wen, Y. (2014). The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity? Journal of forest economics, 20(2), 126-140. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001</nowiki>.

Zhang, L. (2010). Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights]. Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition), 10(1), 87-92. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015</nowiki>.

Zhang, X., Xie, Y., Wen, Y., & Li, H. (2011). Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China. World forestry research, 24(2), 64–69. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212</nowiki>.

Zhao, P. (2017). 武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County]. Retrieved October 28, 2018, from <nowiki>http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html</nowiki>.

Zhou, J. (2009). 武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价[Analyze the mode of the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village]. Green finance and accounting, 4, 40-41. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004</nowiki>.

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-28T04:45:28Z

YIXUANYU: /* Achievements */

This case study examines the community-based forest management and the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Wuping county, Longyan city, Fujian province, China. It uses various documents to develop a timeline about how Jiewen village, the first experimental unit in Fujian, makes great achievements of the collective forest tenure reform. The village chief, the village council, the local communities, the local governments, and the state governments cooperate tightly to clarify forest rights for the community including forestland ownership, management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct. With the description of different stakeholders, the case study discusses and assesses the achievements and deficiencies of the collective forest tenure reform and collective forest management by Jiewen’s people. Meanwhile, the under-forest economy will also be discussed in this case study. Some recommendations will also be attached at last.

== Description ==
[[File:ChinaFujianLongyan.png|thumb|Longyan, Fujian, China
]]

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting, marketing timber products, and under-forest economy for better livelihoods of the community. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistributed the collective forests and clarified forest rights for villagers. Compared with other places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four significant changes (Zhao, 2017). In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007). At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002), People’s Communes disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on some issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981), the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of the forest is collectively owned, and 14% is reserved for the state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are divided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a specific piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002).

However, the unified management of collective forests continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, and then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the collective community income, as a result of which the farmers do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department was sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017) mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide industrial materials was decreased from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017). In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in the 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as the establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state-owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)
== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017), he interviewed Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is a villager whose subsistence entirely rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In the 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers tough to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to be at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which seven were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)

=== A Favorable Turn ===
[[File:龙岩市 - City of Longyan - 2016.09 - panoramio.jpg|thumb|
City of Longyan
]]
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

In order to start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there were no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businesspeople. Therefore, FDFP required the village first to average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Eventually, the Village Council divided the collective forests into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, making sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, Li Guilin received the first new forest certificate, in which the forest ownership and a bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct were clarified.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
There were 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village (Li, X., 2017). Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village Council and villagers came with consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through a paid-use system in the condition of constant usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy (Zhou, J., 2009).
# Villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or the future have the property rights. The group of people does not need to pay fees to the village council.
# The Village Council charges villagers if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in the village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016) defined that the under-forest economy is to improve the overall utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016):
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016), the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan (Lin, 2016).

==Stakeholders Analysis ==
Based on the development of the collective forests in Jiewen, the power and interest levels for stakeholders are listed below.
{| class="wikitable"
!High power
Low interest
!High power
High interest
|-
|
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''
|
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
|-
!Low power
High interest
!Low power
Low interest
|-
|
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop the under-forest economy'''

* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
|
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''Foresters'''
|}

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the state government recognized the collective forest tenure reform, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people is entitled to the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since Jiewen's people collectively own the forests, households do not have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected from different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they do not only serve for the higher level of authorities but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, the village chief is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
The groups of people listed below are not directly affected by the collective forest management in Jiewen, but play indispensable roles in the entire process.
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

== Discussion & Assessment ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009).

First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in the new model of the collective forest management, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period.

Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degradation and boosted the community forest security.

Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders. The under-forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform. It provides new opportunities and great potential for the development of collective forestry in Jiewen.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis, and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. In the same year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council enacted the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development as a beginning of paying attention to the collective forest system. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country in 2008 through the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform (Central Committee of the CPC & State Council, 2008). It displayed a similar structure with Jiewen's model which can be summarized as the redistribution of the forest ownership, the management rights, the disposal rights and the usufruct (Zhang et al., 2011).

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014), about 60% of the forests in China are collectively owned, and the rest are state-owned. However, the proportion of forest stock by the collective forests are just around 37%, weighing much less than the state forests compared to the forest ownership match ratio. It shows that the quality of the collective forests needs improve in an extended period.

Following the criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen and other communities still need to confront with difficulties of collective forest co-management. The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (SFA, 2014) shows that the problem of deforestation in some areas is still severe with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization. It illustrates that some communities have not realized the essential of the under-forest economy which benefits the socio-economic development and forest resources conservation. Combined with current situation, China has a really top-down political system. Mostly, if the highest government make a decision, the lower level administrations have to follow the order. It forms an efficient system to promote the policies but reversely lead to lacking the involvement of people in the bottom.

On the other hand, the unclear concept of the forest rights still causes issues. Accoring to L. Zhang (2010), there is no completed and specific enactment concerning the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism. As a core in forestry, the forest rights should be a legal concept while it is more often used with unclear directions in a policy term (Zhang, L., 2010). Meanwhile, the legal rationality is also insufficient, current series of logical problems. To some extent, these have led to enormous obstacles to the connection between China's forest tenure reform policy and relevant legislation. Based on the current practice, the forest right can be defined as a limited concept targeting the utilization right and the usufruct of forests.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers: Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the community-based collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming, and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches to eveloping new forms of forestry economy.

* Village council: Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique. They also need to consider a scheduled timetable for the regulated meeting.
* Foresters: Gain advanced knowledge and technology for improving the quality and quantity of the collective forests.

* Local governments: Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

* Forest Departments: Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

* State Government: Strengthen legislation system for forest rights. Reduce the taxes and fees for the communities in forestry developement.

== References ==
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council. (2008). 中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见[Opinions on comprehensively promoting the collective forest tenure reform]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html</nowiki>.

Jiewencun. 2018, May 1. In Baidubaike. Retrieved October 22, 2018, from <nowiki>https://baike.baidu.com/item</nowiki>.

Li, X. (2017). “林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]. Retrieved from <nowiki>https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707</nowiki>.

Lin, C. (2016). 武平县林下经济发展状况研究[Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County]. 现代商贸工业, 34, 50-51. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026</nowiki>.

Lu, W., Landell-Mills, N., Liu, J., Xu, J., Liu, C. (2002). Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China. London: International Institute for Environment and Development. <nowiki>https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting</nowiki>.

Menzies, N. K. (2007). Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management. New York: Columbia University Press.

State Forestry Administration. (1981).关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on several issues concerning the protection of forest and development of forestry]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx</nowiki>?.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived from <nowiki>http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html</nowiki>.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). The eighth national forest resource inventory results. Beijing: The forest resource management, pp. 1-2. <nowiki>http://doi.org/10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001</nowiki>.

Xie, Y., Gong, P., Han, X., & Wen, Y. (2014). The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity? Journal of forest economics, 20(2), 126-140. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001</nowiki>.

Zhang, L. (2010). Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights]. Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition), 10(1), 87-92. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015</nowiki>.

Zhang, X., Xie, Y., Wen, Y., & Li, H. (2011). Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China. World forestry research, 24(2), 64–69. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212</nowiki>.

Zhao, P. (2017). 武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County]. Retrieved October 28, 2018, from <nowiki>http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html</nowiki>.

Zhou, J. (2009). 武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价[Analyze the mode of the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village]. Green finance and accounting, 4, 40-41. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004</nowiki>.

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-28T04:41:54Z

YIXUANYU:

This case study examines the community-based forest management and the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Wuping county, Longyan city, Fujian province, China. It uses various documents to develop a timeline about how Jiewen village, the first experimental unit in Fujian, makes great achievements of the collective forest tenure reform. The village chief, the village council, the local communities, the local governments, and the state governments cooperate tightly to clarify forest rights for the community including forestland ownership, management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct. With the description of different stakeholders, the case study discusses and assesses the achievements and deficiencies of the collective forest tenure reform and collective forest management by Jiewen’s people. Meanwhile, the under-forest economy will also be discussed in this case study. Some recommendations will also be attached at last.

== Description ==
[[File:ChinaFujianLongyan.png|thumb|Longyan, Fujian, China
]]

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting, marketing timber products, and under-forest economy for better livelihoods of the community. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistributed the collective forests and clarified forest rights for villagers. Compared with other places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four significant changes (Zhao, 2017). In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007). At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002), People’s Communes disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on some issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981), the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of the forest is collectively owned, and 14% is reserved for the state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are divided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a specific piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002).

However, the unified management of collective forests continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, and then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the collective community income, as a result of which the farmers do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department was sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017) mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide industrial materials was decreased from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017). In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in the 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as the establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state-owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)
== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017), he interviewed Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is a villager whose subsistence entirely rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In the 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers tough to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to be at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which seven were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)

=== A Favorable Turn ===
[[File:龙岩市 - City of Longyan - 2016.09 - panoramio.jpg|thumb|
City of Longyan
]]
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

In order to start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there were no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businesspeople. Therefore, FDFP required the village first to average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Eventually, the Village Council divided the collective forests into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, making sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, Li Guilin received the first new forest certificate, in which the forest ownership and a bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct were clarified.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
There were 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village (Li, X., 2017). Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village Council and villagers came with consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through a paid-use system in the condition of constant usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy (Zhou, J., 2009).
# Villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or the future have the property rights. The group of people does not need to pay fees to the village council.
# The Village Council charges villagers if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in the village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016) defined that the under-forest economy is to improve the overall utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016):
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016), the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan (Lin, 2016).

==Stakeholders Analysis ==
Based on the development of the collective forests in Jiewen, the power and interest levels for stakeholders are listed below.
{| class="wikitable"
!High power
Low interest
!High power
High interest
|-
|
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''
|
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
|-
!Low power
High interest
!Low power
Low interest
|-
|
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop the under-forest economy'''

* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
|
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''Foresters'''
|}

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the state government recognized the collective forest tenure reform, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people is entitled to the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since Jiewen's people collectively own the forests, households do not have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected from different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they do not only serve for the higher level of authorities but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, the village chief is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
The groups of people listed below are not directly affected by the collective forest management in Jiewen, but play indispensable roles in the entire process.
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

== Discussion & Assessment ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009).

First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in a new model, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period.

Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degradation and boosted the forest security.

Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders. The under-forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform. It provides new opportunities and great potential for the development of collective forestry in Jiewen.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis, and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. In the same year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council enacted the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development as a beginning of paying attention to the collective forest system. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country in 2008 through the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform (Central Committee of the CPC & State Council, 2008). It displayed a similar structure with Jiewen's model which can be summarized as the redistribution of the forest ownership, the management rights, the disposal rights and the usufruct (Zhang et al., 2011).

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014), about 60% of the forests in China are collectively owned, and the rest are state-owned. However, the proportion of forest stock by the collective forests are just around 37%, weighing less than the state forests compared to the forest ownership match ratio. It shows that the quality of the collective forests needs improve in an extended period.

Following the criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen and other communities still need to confront with difficulties of collective forest co-management. The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (SFA, 2014) shows that the problem of deforestation in some areas is still severe with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization. It illustrates that some communities have not realized the essential of the under-forest economy which benefits the socio-economic development and forest resources conservation. Combined with current situation, China has a really top-down political system. Mostly, if the highest government make a decision, the lower level administrations have to follow the order. It forms an efficient system to promote the policies but reversely lead to lacking the involvement of people in the bottom.

On the other hand, the unclear concept of the forest right still causes issues. There is no completed and specific enactment concerning the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism. As a core in forestry, the forest rights should be a legal concept while it is more often used with unclear directions in a policy term (Zhang, L., 2010). Meanwhile, the legal rationality is also insufficient, current series of logical problems. To some extent, these have led to enormous obstacles to the connection between China's forest tenure reform policy and relevant legislation. Based on the current practice, the forest right can be defined as a limited concept targeting the utilization right and the usufruct of forests.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers: Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the community-based collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming, and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches to eveloping new forms of forestry economy.

* Village council: Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique. They also need to consider a scheduled timetable for the regulated meeting.
* Foresters: Gain advanced knowledge and technology for improving the quality and quantity of the collective forests.

* Local governments: Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

* Forest Departments: Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

* State Government: Strengthen legislation system for forest rights. Reduce the taxes and fees for the communities in forestry developement.

== References ==
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council. (2008). 中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见[Opinions on comprehensively promoting the collective forest tenure reform]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html</nowiki>.

Jiewencun. 2018, May 1. In Baidubaike. Retrieved October 22, 2018, from <nowiki>https://baike.baidu.com/item</nowiki>.

Li, X. (2017). “林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]. Retrieved from <nowiki>https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707</nowiki>.

Lin, C. (2016). 武平县林下经济发展状况研究[Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County]. 现代商贸工业, 34, 50-51. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026</nowiki>.

Lu, W., Landell-Mills, N., Liu, J., Xu, J., Liu, C. (2002). Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China. London: International Institute for Environment and Development. <nowiki>https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting</nowiki>.

Menzies, N. K. (2007). Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management. New York: Columbia University Press.

State Forestry Administration. (1981).关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on several issues concerning the protection of forest and development of forestry]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx</nowiki>?.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived from <nowiki>http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html</nowiki>.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). The eighth national forest resource inventory results. Beijing: The forest resource management, pp. 1-2. <nowiki>http://doi.org/10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001</nowiki>.

Xie, Y., Gong, P., Han, X., & Wen, Y. (2014). The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity? Journal of forest economics, 20(2), 126-140. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001</nowiki>.

Zhang, L. (2010). Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights]. Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition), 10(1), 87-92. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015</nowiki>.

Zhang, X., Xie, Y., Wen, Y., & Li, H. (2011). Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China. World forestry research, 24(2), 64–69. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212</nowiki>.

Zhao, P. (2017). 武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County]. Retrieved October 28, 2018, from <nowiki>http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html</nowiki>.

Zhou, J. (2009). 武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价[Analyze the mode of the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village]. Green finance and accounting, 4, 40-41. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004</nowiki>.

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-26T23:58:14Z

YIXUANYU: /* References */

This case study examines the community-based forest management and the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Wuping county, Longyan City, Fujian province, China. It uses various documents to develop a timeline about how Jiewen village, the first experimental unit in Fujian, make great achievements of the collective forest tenure reform. The village council and the local governments cooperate tightly to clarify property rights for the community including forestland ownership, management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct. With the description of different stakeholders, the case study explains the achievements and deficiencies of the collective forest tenure reform and community forest management by Jiewen’s people. Meanwhile, the under-forest economy will also be discussed in this case study.

== Description ==
[[File:ChinaFujianLongyan.png|thumb|Longyan, Fujian, China
]]

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting, marketing timber products, and under-forest economy for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistributed the collective forests and clarified forest right for villagers. Compared with other places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four significant changes (Zhao, 2017). In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007). At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002), People’s Communes disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on some issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981), the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of the forest is collectively owned, and 14% is reserved for the state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are divided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a specific piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002).

However, the unified management of collective forests continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, and then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the collective community income, as a result of which the farmers do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department was sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017) mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide industrial materials was decreased from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017). In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in the 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as the establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state-owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)
== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017), he interviewed Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is a villager whose subsistence entirely rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In the 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers tough to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to be at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which seven were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)

=== A Favorable Turn ===
[[File:龙岩市 - City of Longyan - 2016.09 - panoramio.jpg|thumb|
City of Longyan
]]
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

In order to start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there were no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businesspeople. Therefore, FDFP required the village first to average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Eventually, the Village Council divided the collective forests into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, making sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, Li Guilin received the first new forest certificate, in which the forest ownership and a bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct were clarified.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
There were 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village (Li, X., 2017). Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village Council and villagers came with consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through a paid-use system in the condition of constant usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy (Zhou, J., 2009).
# Villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or the future have the property rights. The group of people does not need to pay fees to the village council.
# The Village Council charges villagers if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in the village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016) defined that the under-forest economy is to improve the overall utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016):
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016), the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan (Lin, 2016).

==Stakeholders Analysis ==
Based on the development of the collective forests in Jiewen, I analyze the power and interest levels for stakeholders.
{| class="wikitable"
!High power
Low interest
!High power
High interest
|-
|
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''
|
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
|-
!Low power
High interest
!Low power
Low interest
|-
|
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop the under-forest economy'''

* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
|
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''oresters'''
|}

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the state government recognized the collective forest tenure reform, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people is entitled to the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since Jiewen's people collectively own the forests, households do not have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected from different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they do not only serve for the higher level of authorities but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, the village chief is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
The groups of people listed below are not directly affected by the collective forest management in Jiewen, but play indispensable roles in the entire process.
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

== Discussion & Assessment ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009).

First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in a new model, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period.

Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degradation and boosted the forest security.

Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders. The under-forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform. It provides new opportunities and great potential for the development of collective forestry in Jiewen.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis, and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. In the same year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council enacted the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development as a beginning of paying attention to the collective forest system. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country in 2008 through the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform (Central Committee of the CPC & State Council, 2008). It displayed a similar structure with Jiewen's model which can be summarized as the redistribution of the forest ownership, the management rights, the disposal rights and the usufruct (Zhang et al., 2011).

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014), about 60% of the forests in China are collectively owned, and the rest are state-owned. However, the proportion of forest stock by the collective forests are just around 37%, weighing less than the state forests compared to the forest ownership match ratio. It shows that the quality of the collective forests needs improve in an extended period.

Following the criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen and other communities still need to confront with difficulties of collective forest co-management. The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (SFA, 2014) shows that the problem of deforestation in some areas is still severe with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization. It illustrates that some communities have not realized the essential of the under-forest economy which benefits the socio-economic development and forest resources conservation. Combined with current situation, China has a really top-down political system. Mostly, if the highest government make a decision, the lower level administrations have to follow the order. It forms an efficient system to promote the policies but reversely lead to lacking the involvement of people in the bottom.

On the other hand, the unclear concept of the forest right still causes issues. There is no completed and specific enactment concerning the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism. As a core in forestry, the forest rights should be a legal concept while it is more often used with unclear directions in a policy term (Zhang, L., 2010). Meanwhile, the legal rationality is also insufficient, current series of logical problems. To some extent, these have led to enormous obstacles to the connection between China's forest tenure reform policy and relevant legislation. Based on the current practice, the forest right can be defined as a limited concept targeting the utilization right and the usufruct of forests.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers: Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the community-based collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming, and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches to eveloping new forms of forestry economy.

* Village council: Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique. They also need to consider a scheduled timetable for the regulated meeting.
* Foresters: Gain advanced knowledge and technology for improving the quality and quantity of the collective forests.

* Local government: Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

* Forest Department: Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

* State Government: Strengthen legislation system for forest rights. Reduce the taxes and fees for the communities in forestry developement.

== References ==
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council. (2008). 中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见[Opinions on comprehensively promoting the collective forest tenure reform]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html</nowiki>.

Jiewencun. 2018, May 1. In Baidubaike. Retrieved October 22, 2018, from <nowiki>https://baike.baidu.com/item</nowiki>.

Li, X. (2017). “林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]. Retrieved from <nowiki>https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707</nowiki>.

Lin, C. (2016). 武平县林下经济发展状况研究[Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County]. 现代商贸工业, 34, 50-51. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026</nowiki>.

Lu, W., Landell-Mills, N., Liu, J., Xu, J., Liu, C. (2002). Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China. London: International Institute for Environment and Development. <nowiki>https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting</nowiki>.

Menzies, N. K. (2007). Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management. New York: Columbia University Press.

State Forestry Administration. (1981).关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on several issues concerning the protection of forest and development of forestry]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx</nowiki>?.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived from <nowiki>http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html</nowiki>.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). The eighth national forest resource inventory results. Beijing: The forest resource management, pp. 1-2. <nowiki>http://doi.org/10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001</nowiki>.

Xie, Y., Gong, P., Han, X., & Wen, Y. (2014). The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity? Journal of forest economics, 20(2), 126-140. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001</nowiki>.

Zhang, L. (2010). Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights]. Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition), 10(1), 87-92. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015</nowiki>.

Zhang, X., Xie, Y., Wen, Y., & Li, H. (2011). Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China. World forestry research, 24(2), 64–69. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212</nowiki>.

Zhao, P. (2017). 武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County]. Retrieved October 28, 2018, from <nowiki>http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html</nowiki>.

Zhou, J. (2009). 武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价[Analyze the mode of the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village]. Green finance and accounting, 4, 40-41. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004</nowiki>.

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-26T23:54:52Z

YIXUANYU: /* Introduction */

This case study examines the community-based forest management and the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Wuping county, Longyan City, Fujian province, China. It uses various documents to develop a timeline about how Jiewen village, the first experimental unit in Fujian, make great achievements of the collective forest tenure reform. The village council and the local governments cooperate tightly to clarify property rights for the community including forestland ownership, management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct. With the description of different stakeholders, the case study explains the achievements and deficiencies of the collective forest tenure reform and community forest management by Jiewen’s people. Meanwhile, the under-forest economy will also be discussed in this case study.

== Description ==
[[File:ChinaFujianLongyan.png|thumb|Longyan, Fujian, China
]]

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting, marketing timber products, and under-forest economy for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistributed the collective forests and clarified forest right for villagers. Compared with other places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four significant changes (Zhao, 2017). In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007). At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002), People’s Communes disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on some issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981), the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of the forest is collectively owned, and 14% is reserved for the state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are divided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a specific piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002).

However, the unified management of collective forests continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, and then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the collective community income, as a result of which the farmers do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department was sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017) mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide industrial materials was decreased from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017). In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in the 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as the establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state-owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)
== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017), he interviewed Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is a villager whose subsistence entirely rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In the 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers tough to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to be at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which seven were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)

=== A Favorable Turn ===
[[File:龙岩市 - City of Longyan - 2016.09 - panoramio.jpg|thumb|
City of Longyan
]]
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

In order to start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there were no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businesspeople. Therefore, FDFP required the village first to average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Eventually, the Village Council divided the collective forests into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, making sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, Li Guilin received the first new forest certificate, in which the forest ownership and a bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct were clarified.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
There were 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village (Li, X., 2017). Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village Council and villagers came with consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through a paid-use system in the condition of constant usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy (Zhou, J., 2009).
# Villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or the future have the property rights. The group of people does not need to pay fees to the village council.
# The Village Council charges villagers if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in the village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016) defined that the under-forest economy is to improve the overall utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016):
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016), the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan (Lin, 2016).

==Stakeholders Analysis ==
Based on the development of the collective forests in Jiewen, I analyze the power and interest levels for stakeholders.
{| class="wikitable"
!High power
Low interest
!High power
High interest
|-
|
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''
|
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
|-
!Low power
High interest
!Low power
Low interest
|-
|
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop the under-forest economy'''

* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
|
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''oresters'''
|}

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the state government recognized the collective forest tenure reform, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people is entitled to the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since Jiewen's people collectively own the forests, households do not have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected from different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they do not only serve for the higher level of authorities but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, the village chief is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
The groups of people listed below are not directly affected by the collective forest management in Jiewen, but play indispensable roles in the entire process.
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

== Discussion & Assessment ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009).

First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in a new model, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period.

Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degradation and boosted the forest security.

Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders. The under-forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform. It provides new opportunities and great potential for the development of collective forestry in Jiewen.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis, and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. In the same year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council enacted the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development as a beginning of paying attention to the collective forest system. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country in 2008 through the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform (Central Committee of the CPC & State Council, 2008). It displayed a similar structure with Jiewen's model which can be summarized as the redistribution of the forest ownership, the management rights, the disposal rights and the usufruct (Zhang et al., 2011).

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014), about 60% of the forests in China are collectively owned, and the rest are state-owned. However, the proportion of forest stock by the collective forests are just around 37%, weighing less than the state forests compared to the forest ownership match ratio. It shows that the quality of the collective forests needs improve in an extended period.

Following the criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen and other communities still need to confront with difficulties of collective forest co-management. The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (SFA, 2014) shows that the problem of deforestation in some areas is still severe with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization. It illustrates that some communities have not realized the essential of the under-forest economy which benefits the socio-economic development and forest resources conservation. Combined with current situation, China has a really top-down political system. Mostly, if the highest government make a decision, the lower level administrations have to follow the order. It forms an efficient system to promote the policies but reversely lead to lacking the involvement of people in the bottom.

On the other hand, the unclear concept of the forest right still causes issues. There is no completed and specific enactment concerning the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism. As a core in forestry, the forest rights should be a legal concept while it is more often used with unclear directions in a policy term (Zhang, L., 2010). Meanwhile, the legal rationality is also insufficient, current series of logical problems. To some extent, these have led to enormous obstacles to the connection between China's forest tenure reform policy and relevant legislation. Based on the current practice, the forest right can be defined as a limited concept targeting the utilization right and the usufruct of forests.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers: Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the community-based collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming, and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches to eveloping new forms of forestry economy.

* Village council: Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique. They also need to consider a scheduled timetable for the regulated meeting.
* Foresters: Gain advanced knowledge and technology for improving the quality and quantity of the collective forests.

* Local government: Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

* Forest Department: Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

* State Government: Strengthen legislation system for forest rights. Reduce the taxes and fees for the communities in forestry developement.

== References ==
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council. (2008). 中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见[Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html</nowiki>.

Jiewencun. 2018, May 1. In Baidubaike. Retrieved October 22, 2018, from <nowiki>https://baike.baidu.com/item</nowiki>.

Li, X. (2017). “林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]. Retrieved from <nowiki>https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707</nowiki>.

Lin, C. (2016). 武平县林下经济发展状况研究[Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County]. 现代商贸工业, 34, 50-51. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026</nowiki>.

Lu, W., Landell-Mills, N., Liu, J., Xu, J., Liu, C. (2002). Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China. London: International Institute for Environment and Development. <nowiki>https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting</nowiki>.

Menzies, N. K. (2007). Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management. New York: Columbia University Press.

State Forestry Administration. (1981).关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on several issues concerning the protection of forest and development of forestry]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx</nowiki>?.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived from <nowiki>http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html</nowiki>.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results. Beijing: The Forest Resource Management, pp. 1-2. <nowiki>http://doi.org/10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001</nowiki>.

Xie, Y., Gong, P., Han, X., & Wen, Y. (2014). The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity? Journal of forest economics, 20(2), 126-140. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001</nowiki>.

Zhang, L. (2010). Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights]. Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition), 10(1), 87-92. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015</nowiki>.

Zhang, X., Xie, Y., Wen, Y., & Li, H. (2011). Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China. World forestry research, 24(2), 64–69. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212</nowiki>.

Zhao, P. (2017). 武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County]. Retrieved October 28, 2018, from <nowiki>http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html</nowiki>.

Zhou, J. (2009). 武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价[Analyze the mode of the forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village]. Green finance and accounting, 4, 40-41. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004</nowiki>.

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-26T23:51:06Z

YIXUANYU: /* Stakeholders Analysis */

This case study examines the community-based forest management and the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Wuping county, Longyan City, Fujian province, China. It uses various documents to develop a timeline about how Jiewen village, the first experimental unit in Fujian, make great achievements of the collective forest tenure reform. The village council and the local governments cooperate tightly to clarify property rights for the community including forestland ownership, management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct. With the description of different stakeholders, the case study explains the achievements and deficiencies of the collective forest tenure reform and community forest management by Jiewen’s people. Meanwhile, the under-forest economy will also be discussed in this case study.

== Description ==
[[File:ChinaFujianLongyan.png|thumb|Longyan, Fujian, China
]]

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting, and marketing timber products and under-forest economy for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with other places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four significant changes (Zhao, 2017). In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007). At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002), People’s Communes disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on some issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981), the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of the forest is collectively owned, and 14% is reserved for the state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are divided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a specific piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002).

However, the unified management of collective forests continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, and then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the collective community income, as a result of which the farmers do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department was sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017) mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide industrial materials was decreased from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017). In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in the 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as the establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state-owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)
== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017), he interviewed Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is a villager whose subsistence entirely rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In the 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers tough to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to be at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which seven were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)

=== A Favorable Turn ===
[[File:龙岩市 - City of Longyan - 2016.09 - panoramio.jpg|thumb|
City of Longyan
]]
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

In order to start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there were no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businesspeople. Therefore, FDFP required the village first to average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Eventually, the Village Council divided the collective forests into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, making sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, Li Guilin received the first new forest certificate, in which the forest ownership and a bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct were clarified.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
There were 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village (Li, X., 2017). Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village Council and villagers came with consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through a paid-use system in the condition of constant usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy (Zhou, J., 2009).
# Villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or the future have the property rights. The group of people does not need to pay fees to the village council.
# The Village Council charges villagers if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in the village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016) defined that the under-forest economy is to improve the overall utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016):
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016), the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan (Lin, 2016).

==Stakeholders Analysis ==
Based on the development of the collective forests in Jiewen, I analyze the power and interest levels for stakeholders.
{| class="wikitable"
!High power
Low interest
!High power
High interest
|-
|
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''
|
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
|-
!Low power
High interest
!Low power
Low interest
|-
|
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop the under-forest economy'''

* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
|
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''oresters'''
|}

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the state government recognized the collective forest tenure reform, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people is entitled to the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since Jiewen's people collectively own the forests, households do not have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected from different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they do not only serve for the higher level of authorities but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, the village chief is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
The groups of people listed below are not directly affected by the collective forest management in Jiewen, but play indispensable roles in the entire process.
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

== Discussion & Assessment ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009).

First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in a new model, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period.

Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degradation and boosted the forest security.

Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders. The under-forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform. It provides new opportunities and great potential for the development of collective forestry in Jiewen.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis, and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. In the same year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council enacted the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development as a beginning of paying attention to the collective forest system. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country in 2008 through the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform (Central Committee of the CPC & State Council, 2008). It displayed a similar structure with Jiewen's model which can be summarized as the redistribution of the forest ownership, the management rights, the disposal rights and the usufruct (Zhang et al., 2011).

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014), about 60% of the forests in China are collectively owned, and the rest are state-owned. However, the proportion of forest stock by the collective forests are just around 37%, weighing less than the state forests compared to the forest ownership match ratio. It shows that the quality of the collective forests needs improve in an extended period.

Following the criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen and other communities still need to confront with difficulties of collective forest co-management. The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (SFA, 2014) shows that the problem of deforestation in some areas is still severe with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization. It illustrates that some communities have not realized the essential of the under-forest economy which benefits the socio-economic development and forest resources conservation. Combined with current situation, China has a really top-down political system. Mostly, if the highest government make a decision, the lower level administrations have to follow the order. It forms an efficient system to promote the policies but reversely lead to lacking the involvement of people in the bottom.

On the other hand, the unclear concept of the forest right still causes issues. There is no completed and specific enactment concerning the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism. As a core in forestry, the forest rights should be a legal concept while it is more often used with unclear directions in a policy term (Zhang, L., 2010). Meanwhile, the legal rationality is also insufficient, current series of logical problems. To some extent, these have led to enormous obstacles to the connection between China's forest tenure reform policy and relevant legislation. Based on the current practice, the forest right can be defined as a limited concept targeting the utilization right and the usufruct of forests.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers: Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the community-based collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming, and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches to eveloping new forms of forestry economy.

* Village council: Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique. They also need to consider a scheduled timetable for the regulated meeting.
* Foresters: Gain advanced knowledge and technology for improving the quality and quantity of the collective forests.

* Local government: Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

* Forest Department: Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

* State Government: Strengthen legislation system for forest rights. Reduce the taxes and fees for the communities in forestry developement.

== References ==
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council. (2008). 中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见[Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html</nowiki>.

Jiewencun. 2018, May 1. In Baidubaike. Retrieved October 22, 2018, from <nowiki>https://baike.baidu.com/item</nowiki>.

Li, X. (2017). “林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]. Retrieved from <nowiki>https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707</nowiki>.

Lin, C. (2016). 武平县林下经济发展状况研究[Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County]. 现代商贸工业, 34, 50-51. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026</nowiki>.

Lu, W., Landell-Mills, N., Liu, J., Xu, J., Liu, C. (2002). Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China. London: International Institute for Environment and Development. <nowiki>https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting</nowiki>.

Menzies, N. K. (2007). Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management. New York: Columbia University Press.

State Forestry Administration. (1981).关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on several issues concerning the protection of forest and development of forestry]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx</nowiki>?.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived from <nowiki>http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html</nowiki>.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results. Beijing: The Forest Resource Management, pp. 1-2. <nowiki>http://doi.org/10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001</nowiki>.

Xie, Y., Gong, P., Han, X., & Wen, Y. (2014). The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity? Journal of forest economics, 20(2), 126-140. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001</nowiki>.

Zhang, L. (2010). Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights]. Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition), 10(1), 87-92. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015</nowiki>.

Zhang, X., Xie, Y., Wen, Y., & Li, H. (2011). Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China. World forestry research, 24(2), 64–69. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212</nowiki>.

Zhao, P. (2017). 武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County]. Retrieved October 28, 2018, from <nowiki>http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html</nowiki>.

Zhou, J. (2009). 武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价[Analyze the mode of the forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village]. Green finance and accounting, 4, 40-41. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004</nowiki>.

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-26T23:45:44Z

YIXUANYU:

This case study examines the community-based forest management and the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Wuping county, Longyan City, Fujian province, China. It uses various documents to develop a timeline about how Jiewen village, the first experimental unit in Fujian, make great achievements of the collective forest tenure reform. The village council and the local governments cooperate tightly to clarify property rights for the community including forestland ownership, management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct. With the description of different stakeholders, the case study explains the achievements and deficiencies of the collective forest tenure reform and community forest management by Jiewen’s people. Meanwhile, the under-forest economy will also be discussed in this case study.

== Description ==
[[File:ChinaFujianLongyan.png|thumb|Longyan, Fujian, China
]]

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting, and marketing timber products and under-forest economy for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with other places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four significant changes (Zhao, 2017). In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007). At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002), People’s Communes disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on some issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981), the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of the forest is collectively owned, and 14% is reserved for the state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are divided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a specific piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002).

However, the unified management of collective forests continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, and then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the collective community income, as a result of which the farmers do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department was sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017) mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide industrial materials was decreased from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017). In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in the 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as the establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state-owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)
== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017), he interviewed Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is a villager whose subsistence entirely rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In the 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers tough to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to be at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which seven were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)

=== A Favorable Turn ===
[[File:龙岩市 - City of Longyan - 2016.09 - panoramio.jpg|thumb|
City of Longyan
]]
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

In order to start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there were no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businesspeople. Therefore, FDFP required the village first to average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Eventually, the Village Council divided the collective forests into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, making sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, Li Guilin received the first new forest certificate, in which the forest ownership and a bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct were clarified.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
There were 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village (Li, X., 2017). Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village Council and villagers came with consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through a paid-use system in the condition of constant usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy (Zhou, J., 2009).
# Villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or the future have the property rights. The group of people does not need to pay fees to the village council.
# The Village Council charges villagers if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in the village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016) defined that the under-forest economy is to improve the overall utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016):
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016), the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan (Lin, 2016).

==Stakeholders Analysis ==
Based on the development of the collective forests in Jiewen, I analyze the power and interest levels for stakeholders.
{| class="wikitable"
!High power
Low interest
!High power
High interest
|-
|
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''
|
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
|-
!Low power
High interest
!Low power
Low interest
|-
|
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop the under-forest economy'''

* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
|
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
|}

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the state government recognized the collective forest tenure reform, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people is entitled to the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since Jiewen's people collectively own the forests, households do not have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected from different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they do not only serve for the higher level of authorities but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, the village chief is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
The groups of people listed below are not directly affected by the collective forest management in Jiewen, but play indispensable roles in the entire process.
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

== Discussion & Assessment ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009).

First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in a new model, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period.

Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degradation and boosted the forest security.

Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders. The under-forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform. It provides new opportunities and great potential for the development of collective forestry in Jiewen.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis, and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. In the same year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council enacted the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development as a beginning of paying attention to the collective forest system. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country in 2008 through the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform (Central Committee of the CPC & State Council, 2008). It displayed a similar structure with Jiewen's model which can be summarized as the redistribution of the forest ownership, the management rights, the disposal rights and the usufruct (Zhang et al., 2011).

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014), about 60% of the forests in China are collectively owned, and the rest are state-owned. However, the proportion of forest stock by the collective forests are just around 37%, weighing less than the state forests compared to the forest ownership match ratio. It shows that the quality of the collective forests needs improve in an extended period.

Following the criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen and other communities still need to confront with difficulties of collective forest co-management. The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (SFA, 2014) shows that the problem of deforestation in some areas is still severe with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization. It illustrates that some communities have not realized the essential of the under-forest economy which benefits the socio-economic development and forest resources conservation. Combined with current situation, China has a really top-down political system. Mostly, if the highest government make a decision, the lower level administrations have to follow the order. It forms an efficient system to promote the policies but reversely lead to lacking the involvement of people in the bottom.

On the other hand, the unclear concept of the forest right still causes issues. There is no completed and specific enactment concerning the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism. As a core in forestry, the forest rights should be a legal concept while it is more often used with unclear directions in a policy term (Zhang, L., 2010). Meanwhile, the legal rationality is also insufficient, current series of logical problems. To some extent, these have led to enormous obstacles to the connection between China's forest tenure reform policy and relevant legislation. Based on the current practice, the forest right can be defined as a limited concept targeting the utilization right and the usufruct of forests.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers: Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the community-based collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming, and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches to eveloping new forms of forestry economy.

* Village council: Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique. They also need to consider a scheduled timetable for the regulated meeting.
* Foresters: Gain advanced knowledge and technology for improving the quality and quantity of the collective forests.

* Local government: Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

* Forest Department: Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

* State Government: Strengthen legislation system for forest rights. Reduce the taxes and fees for the communities in forestry developement.

== References ==
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council. (2008). 中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见[Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html</nowiki>.

Jiewencun. 2018, May 1. In Baidubaike. Retrieved October 22, 2018, from <nowiki>https://baike.baidu.com/item</nowiki>.

Li, X. (2017). “林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]. Retrieved from <nowiki>https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707</nowiki>.

Lin, C. (2016). 武平县林下经济发展状况研究[Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County]. 现代商贸工业, 34, 50-51. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026</nowiki>.

Lu, W., Landell-Mills, N., Liu, J., Xu, J., Liu, C. (2002). Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China. London: International Institute for Environment and Development. <nowiki>https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting</nowiki>.

Menzies, N. K. (2007). Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management. New York: Columbia University Press.

State Forestry Administration. (1981).关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on several issues concerning the protection of forest and development of forestry]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx</nowiki>?.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived from <nowiki>http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html</nowiki>.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results. Beijing: The Forest Resource Management, pp. 1-2. <nowiki>http://doi.org/10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001</nowiki>.

Xie, Y., Gong, P., Han, X., & Wen, Y. (2014). The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity? Journal of forest economics, 20(2), 126-140. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001</nowiki>.

Zhang, L. (2010). Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights]. Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition), 10(1), 87-92. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015</nowiki>.

Zhang, X., Xie, Y., Wen, Y., & Li, H. (2011). Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China. World forestry research, 24(2), 64–69. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212</nowiki>.

Zhao, P. (2017). 武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County]. Retrieved October 28, 2018, from <nowiki>http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html</nowiki>.

Zhou, J. (2009). 武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价[Analyze the mode of the forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village]. Green finance and accounting, 4, 40-41. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004</nowiki>.

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-26T22:46:51Z

YIXUANYU:

This case study examines the development of the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village, Wuping County, Longyan City in Fujian Province, China. China has a really top-down political system. Mostly, if the highest government make a decision, the lower level administrations have to follow the order. It forms an efficient system to promote the policies but also can lead to lacking the involvement of people in the bottom.

Jiewen's experience gives us a new sight about the community-based forest management. With the support of the local governments, local communities finally gained legitimacy through the collective forest co-management.

== Description ==
[[File:ChinaFujianLongyan.png|thumb|Longyan, Fujian, China
]]

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting, and marketing timber products and under-forest economy for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with other places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four significant changes (Zhao, 2017). In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007). At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002), People’s Communes disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on some issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981), the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of the forest is collectively owned, and 14% is reserved for the state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are divided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a specific piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002).

However, the unified management of collective forests continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, and then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the collective community income, as a result of which the farmers do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department was sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017) mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide industrial materials was decreased from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017). In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in the 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as the establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state-owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)
== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017), he interviewed Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is a villager whose subsistence entirely rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In the 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers tough to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to be at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which seven were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)

=== A Favorable Turn ===
[[File:龙岩市 - City of Longyan - 2016.09 - panoramio.jpg|thumb|
City of Longyan
]]
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

In order to start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there were no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businesspeople. Therefore, FDFP required the village first to average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Eventually, the Village Council divided the collective forests into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, making sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, Li Guilin received the first new forest certificate, in which the forest ownership and a bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct were clarified.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
There were 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village (Li, X., 2017). Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village Council and villagers came with consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through a paid-use system in the condition of constant usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy (Zhou, J., 2009).
# Villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or the future have the property rights. The group of people does not need to pay fees to the village council.
# The Village Council charges villagers if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in the village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016) defined that the under-forest economy is to improve the overall utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016):
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016), the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan (Lin, 2016).

==Stakeholders Analysis ==
Based on the development of the collective forests in Jiewen, I analyze the power and interest levels for stakeholders.
{| class="wikitable"
!High power
Low interest
!High power
High interest
|-
|
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''
|
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
|-
!Low power
High interest
!Low power
Low interest
|-
|
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop the under-forest economy'''

* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
|
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
|}

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the state government recognized the collective forest tenure reform, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people is entitled to the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since Jiewen's people collectively own the forests, households do not have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected from different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they do not only serve for the higher level of authorities but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, the village chief is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
The groups of people listed below are not directly affected by the collective forest management in Jiewen, but play indispensable roles in the entire process.
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

== Discussion & Assessment ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009).

First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in a new model, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period.

Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degradation and boosted the forest security.

Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders. The under-forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform. It provides new opportunities and great potential for the development of collective forestry in Jiewen.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis, and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. In the same year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council enacted the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development as a beginning of paying attention to the collective forest system. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country in 2008 through the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform (Central Committee of the CPC & State Council, 2008). It displayed a similar structure with Jiewen's model which can be summarized as the redistribution of the forest ownership, the management rights, the disposal rights and the usufruct (Zhang et al., 2011).

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014), about 60% of the forests in China are collectively owned, and the rest are state-owned. However, the proportion of forest stock by the collective forests are just around 37%, weighing less than the state forests compared to the forest ownership match ratio. It shows that the quality of the collective forests needs improve in an extended period.

Following the criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen and other communities still need to confront with difficulties of collective forest co-management. The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (SFA, 2014) shows that the problem of deforestation in some areas is still severe with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization. It illustrates that some communities have not realized the essential of the under-forest economy which benefits the socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

On the other hand, the unclear concept of the forest right still causes issues. There is no completed and specific enactment concerning the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism. As a core in forestry, the forest rights should be a legal concept while it is more often used with unclear directions in a policy term (Zhang, L., 2010). Meanwhile, the legal rationality is also insufficient, current series of logical problems. To some extent, these have led to enormous obstacles to the connection between China's forest tenure reform policy and relevant legislation. Based on the current practice, the forest right can be defined as a limited concept targeting the utilization right and the usufruct of forests.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers: Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the community-based collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming, and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches to eveloping new forms of forestry economy.

* Village council: Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique. They also need to consider a scheduled timetable for the regulated meeting.
* Foresters: Gain advanced knowledge and technology for improving the quality and quantity of the collective forests.

* Local government: Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

* Forest Department: Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

* State Government: Strengthen legislation system for forest rights. Reduce the taxes and fees for the communities in forestry developement.

== References ==
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council. (2008). 中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见[Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html</nowiki>.

Jiewencun. 2018, May 1. In Baidubaike. Retrieved October 22, 2018, from <nowiki>https://baike.baidu.com/item</nowiki>.

Li, X. (2017). “林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]. Retrieved from <nowiki>https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707</nowiki>.

Lin, C. (2016). 武平县林下经济发展状况研究[Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County]. 现代商贸工业, 34, 50-51. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026</nowiki>.

Lu, W., Landell-Mills, N., Liu, J., Xu, J., Liu, C. (2002). Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China. London: International Institute for Environment and Development. <nowiki>https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting</nowiki>.

Menzies, N. K. (2007). Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management. New York: Columbia University Press.

State Forestry Administration. (1981).关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on several issues concerning the protection of forest and development of forestry]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx</nowiki>?.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived from <nowiki>http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html</nowiki>.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results. Beijing: The Forest Resource Management, pp. 1-2. <nowiki>http://doi.org/10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001</nowiki>.

Xie, Y., Gong, P., Han, X., & Wen, Y. (2014). The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity? Journal of forest economics, 20(2), 126-140. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001</nowiki>.

Zhang, L. (2010). Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights]. Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition), 10(1), 87-92. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015</nowiki>.

Zhang, X., Xie, Y., Wen, Y., & Li, H. (2011). Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China. World forestry research, 24(2), 64–69. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212</nowiki>.

Zhao, P. (2017). 武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County]. Retrieved October 28, 2018, from <nowiki>http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html</nowiki>.

Zhou, J. (2009). 武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价[Analyze the mode of the forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village]. Green finance and accounting, 4, 40-41. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004</nowiki>.

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-26T22:39:11Z

YIXUANYU: /* Stakeholders Analysis */

This case study examines the development of the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village, Wuping County, Longyan City in Fujian Province, China. China has a really top-down political system. Mostly, if the highest government make a decision, the lower level administrations have to follow the order. It forms an efficient system to promote the policies but also can lead to lacking the involvement of people in the bottom. Jiewen's experience gives us a new sight about the community-based forest management. With the support of the local governments, local communities finally gained legitimacy through the collective forest co-management.

== Description ==
[[File:ChinaFujianLongyan.png|thumb|Longyan, Fujian, China
]]

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting, and marketing timber products and under-forest economy for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with other places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four significant changes (Zhao, 2017). In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007). At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002), People’s Communes disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on some issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981), the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of the forest is collectively owned, and 14% is reserved for the state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are divided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a specific piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002).

However, the unified management of collective forests continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, and then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the collective community income, as a result of which the farmers do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department was sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017) mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide industrial materials was decreased from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017). In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in the 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as the establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state-owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)
== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017), he interviewed Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is a villager whose subsistence entirely rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In the 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers tough to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to be at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which seven were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)

=== A Favorable Turn ===
[[File:龙岩市 - City of Longyan - 2016.09 - panoramio.jpg|thumb|
City of Longyan
]]
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

In order to start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there were no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businesspeople. Therefore, FDFP required the village first to average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Eventually, the Village Council divided the collective forests into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, making sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, Li Guilin received the first new forest certificate, in which the forest ownership and a bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct were clarified.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
There were 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village (Li, X., 2017). Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village Council and villagers came with consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through a paid-use system in the condition of constant usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy (Zhou, J., 2009).
# Villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or the future have the property rights. The group of people does not need to pay fees to the village council.
# The Village Council charges villagers if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in the village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016) defined that the under-forest economy is to improve the overall utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016):
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016), the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan (Lin, 2016).

==Stakeholders Analysis ==
Based on the development of the collective forests in Jiewen, I analyze the power and interest levels for stakeholders.
{| class="wikitable"
!High power
Low interest
!High power
High interest
|-
|
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''
|
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
|-
!Low power
High interest
!Low power
Low interest
|-
|
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop the under-forest economy'''

* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
|
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
|}

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the state government recognized the collective forest tenure reform, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people is entitled to the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since Jiewen's people collectively own the forests, households do not have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected from different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they do not only serve for the higher level of authorities but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, the village chief is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
The groups of people listed below are not directly affected by the collective forest management in Jiewen, but play indispensable roles in the entire process.
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

== Discussion & Assessment ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009). First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in a new model, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period. Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degradation and boosted the forest security.

Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders. The under-forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform. It provides new opportunities and great potential for the development of collective forestry in Jiewen.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis, and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. In the same year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council enacted the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development as a beginning of paying attention to the collective forest system. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country in 2008 through the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform (Central Committee of the CPC & State Council, 2008). It displayed a similar structure with Jiewen's model which can be summarized as the redistribution of the forest ownership, the management rights, the disposal rights and the usufruct (Zhang et al., 2011).

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014), about 60% of the forests in China are collectively owned, and the rest are state-owned. However, the proportion of forest stock by the collective forests are just around 37%, weighing less than the state forests compared to the forest ownership match ratio. It shows that the quality of the collective forests needs improve in an extended period.

Following the criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen and other communities still need to confront with difficulties of collective forest co-management. The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (SFA, 2014) shows that the problem of deforestation in some areas is still severe with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization. It illustrates that some communities have not realized the essential of the under-forest economy which benefits the socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

On the other hand, the unclear concept of the forest right still causes issues. There is no completed and specific enactment concerning the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism. As a core in forestry, the forest rights should be a legal concept while it is more often used with unclear directions in a policy term (Zhang, L., 2010). Meanwhile, the legal rationality is also insufficient, current series of logical problems. To some extent, these have led to enormous obstacles to the connection between China's forest tenure reform policy and relevant legislation. Based on the current practice, the forest right can be defined as a limited concept targeting the utilization right and the usufruct of forests.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers: Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the community-based collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming, and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches to eveloping new forms of forestry economy.

* Village council: Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique. They also need to consider a scheduled timetable for the regulated meeting.
* Foresters: Gain advanced knowledge and technology for improving the quality and quantity of the collective forests.

* Local government: Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

* Forest Department: Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

* State Government: Strengthen legislation system for forest rights. Reduce the taxes and fees for the communities in forestry developement.

== References ==
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council. (2008). 中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见[Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html</nowiki>.

Jiewencun. 2018, May 1. In Baidubaike. Retrieved October 22, 2018, from <nowiki>https://baike.baidu.com/item</nowiki>.

Li, X. (2017). “林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]. Retrieved from <nowiki>https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707</nowiki>.

Lin, C. (2016). 武平县林下经济发展状况研究[Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County]. 现代商贸工业, 34, 50-51. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026</nowiki>.

Lu, W., Landell-Mills, N., Liu, J., Xu, J., Liu, C. (2002). Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China. London: International Institute for Environment and Development. <nowiki>https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting</nowiki>.

Menzies, N. K. (2007). Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management. New York: Columbia University Press.

State Forestry Administration. (1981).关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on several issues concerning the protection of forest and development of forestry]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx</nowiki>?.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived from <nowiki>http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html</nowiki>.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results. Beijing: The Forest Resource Management, pp. 1-2. <nowiki>http://doi.org/10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001</nowiki>.

Xie, Y., Gong, P., Han, X., & Wen, Y. (2014). The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity? Journal of forest economics, 20(2), 126-140. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001</nowiki>.

Zhang, L. (2010). Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights]. Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition), 10(1), 87-92. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015</nowiki>.

Zhang, X., Xie, Y., Wen, Y., & Li, H. (2011). Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China. World forestry research, 24(2), 64–69. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212</nowiki>.

Zhao, P. (2017). 武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County]. Retrieved October 28, 2018, from <nowiki>http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html</nowiki>.

Zhou, J. (2009). 武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价[Analyze the mode of the forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village]. Green finance and accounting, 4, 40-41. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004</nowiki>.

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-26T22:34:21Z

YIXUANYU:

This case study examines the development of the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village, Wuping County, Longyan City in Fujian Province, China. China has a really top-down political system. Mostly, if the highest government make a decision, the lower level administrations have to follow the order. It forms an efficient system to promote the policies but also can lead to lacking the involvement of people in the bottom. Jiewen's experience gives us a new sight about the community-based forest management. With the support of the local governments, local communities finally gained legitimacy through the collective forest co-management.

== Description ==
[[File:ChinaFujianLongyan.png|thumb|Longyan, Fujian, China
]]

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018). Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting, and marketing timber products and under-forest economy for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with other places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four significant changes (Zhao, 2017). In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007). At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002), People’s Communes disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on some issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981), the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of the forest is collectively owned, and 14% is reserved for the state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are divided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a specific piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002).

However, the unified management of collective forests continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, and then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the collective community income, as a result of which the farmers do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department was sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017) mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide industrial materials was decreased from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017). In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in the 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as the establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state-owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)
== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017), he interviewed Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is a villager whose subsistence entirely rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In the 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers tough to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to be at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which seven were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)

=== A Favorable Turn ===
[[File:龙岩市 - City of Longyan - 2016.09 - panoramio.jpg|thumb|
City of Longyan
]]
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

In order to start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there were no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businesspeople. Therefore, FDFP required the village first to average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.” – Li Yongxing, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
Eventually, the Village Council divided the collective forests into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, making sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, Li Guilin received the first new forest certificate, in which the forest ownership and a bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct were clarified.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.” – Li Guilin, interviewed by Li X. (2017)
There were 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village (Li, X., 2017). Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village Council and villagers came with consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through a paid-use system in the condition of constant usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy (Zhou, J., 2009).
# Villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or the future have the property rights. The group of people does not need to pay fees to the village council.
# The Village Council charges villagers if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in the village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016) defined that the under-forest economy is to improve the overall utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016):
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016), the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan (Lin, 2016).

==Stakeholders Analysis ==
Based on the development of the collective forests in Jiewen
{| class="wikitable"
!High power
Low interest
!High power
High interest
|-
|
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''
|
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
|-
!Low power
High interest
!Low power
Low interest
|-
|
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop the under-forest economy'''

* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
|
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
|}

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the state government recognized the collective forest tenure reform, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people is entitled to the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since Jiewen's people collectively own the forests, households do not have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected from different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they do not only serve for the higher level of authorities but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, the village chief is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
The groups of people listed below are not directly affected by the collective forest management in Jiewen, but play indispensable roles in the entire process.
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

== Discussion & Assessment ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009). First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in a new model, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period. Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degradation and boosted the forest security.

Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders. The under-forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform. It provides new opportunities and great potential for the development of collective forestry in Jiewen.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis, and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. In the same year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council enacted the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development as a beginning of paying attention to the collective forest system. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country in 2008 through the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform (Central Committee of the CPC & State Council, 2008). It displayed a similar structure with Jiewen's model which can be summarized as the redistribution of the forest ownership, the management rights, the disposal rights and the usufruct (Zhang et al., 2011).

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014), about 60% of the forests in China are collectively owned, and the rest are state-owned. However, the proportion of forest stock by the collective forests are just around 37%, weighing less than the state forests compared to the forest ownership match ratio. It shows that the quality of the collective forests needs improve in an extended period.

Following the criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen and other communities still need to confront with difficulties of collective forest co-management. The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (SFA, 2014) shows that the problem of deforestation in some areas is still severe with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization. It illustrates that some communities have not realized the essential of the under-forest economy which benefits the socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

On the other hand, the unclear concept of the forest right still causes issues. There is no completed and specific enactment concerning the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism. As a core in forestry, the forest rights should be a legal concept while it is more often used with unclear directions in a policy term (Zhang, L., 2010). Meanwhile, the legal rationality is also insufficient, current series of logical problems. To some extent, these have led to enormous obstacles to the connection between China's forest tenure reform policy and relevant legislation. Based on the current practice, the forest right can be defined as a limited concept targeting the utilization right and the usufruct of forests.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers: Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the community-based collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming, and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches to eveloping new forms of forestry economy.

* Village council: Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique. They also need to consider a scheduled timetable for the regulated meeting.
* Foresters: Gain advanced knowledge and technology for improving the quality and quantity of the collective forests.

* Local government: Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

* Forest Department: Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

* State Government: Strengthen legislation system for forest rights. Reduce the taxes and fees for the communities in forestry developement.

== References ==
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council. (2008). 中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见[Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html</nowiki>.

Jiewencun. 2018, May 1. In Baidubaike. Retrieved October 22, 2018, from <nowiki>https://baike.baidu.com/item</nowiki>.

Li, X. (2017). “林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]. Retrieved from <nowiki>https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707</nowiki>.

Lin, C. (2016). 武平县林下经济发展状况研究[Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County]. 现代商贸工业, 34, 50-51. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026</nowiki>.

Lu, W., Landell-Mills, N., Liu, J., Xu, J., Liu, C. (2002). Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China. London: International Institute for Environment and Development. <nowiki>https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting</nowiki>.

Menzies, N. K. (2007). Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management. New York: Columbia University Press.

State Forestry Administration. (1981).关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on several issues concerning the protection of forest and development of forestry]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx</nowiki>?.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived from <nowiki>http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html</nowiki>.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results. Beijing: The Forest Resource Management, pp. 1-2. <nowiki>http://doi.org/10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001</nowiki>.

Xie, Y., Gong, P., Han, X., & Wen, Y. (2014). The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity? Journal of forest economics, 20(2), 126-140. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001</nowiki>.

Zhang, L. (2010). Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights]. Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition), 10(1), 87-92. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015</nowiki>.

Zhang, X., Xie, Y., Wen, Y., & Li, H. (2011). Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China. World forestry research, 24(2), 64–69. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212</nowiki>.

Zhao, P. (2017). 武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County]. Retrieved October 28, 2018, from <nowiki>http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html</nowiki>.

Zhou, J. (2009). 武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价[Analyze the mode of the forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village]. Green finance and accounting, 4, 40-41. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004</nowiki>.

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-26T21:58:11Z

YIXUANYU: /* References */

This case study examines the development of the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village, Wuping County, Longyan City in Fujian Province, China. China has a really top-down political system. Mostly, if the highest government make a decision, the lower level administrations have to follow the order. It forms an efficient system to promote the policies but also can lead to lacking the involvement of people in the bottom. Jiewen's experience gives us a new sight about the community-based forest management. With the support of the local governments, local communities finally gained legitimacy through the collective forest co-management.

== Description ==
[[File:ChinaFujianLongyan.png|thumb|Longyan, Fujian, China
]]

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting, and marketing timber products and under-forest economy for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with other places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four significant changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on some issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of the forest is collectively owned, and 14% is reserved for the state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are divided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a specific piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4" />.

However, the unified management of collective forests continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, and then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the collective community income, as a result of which the farmers do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department was sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017)<ref name=":0" /> mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide industrial materials was decreased from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in the 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as the establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state-owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>
== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017)<ref name=":3">{{Cite news|url=https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707|title=“林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]|last=Li|first=X.|date=2017|work=The Paper|access-date=November 3, 2018}}</ref>, he interviewed Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is a villager whose subsistence entirely rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In the 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers tough to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to be at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which seven were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing

=== A Favorable Turn ===
[[File:龙岩市 - City of Longyan - 2016.09 - panoramio.jpg|thumb|
City of Longyan
]]
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

In order to start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there were no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businesspeople. Therefore, FDFP required the village first to average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Eventually, the Village Council divided the collective forests into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, making sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, Li Guilin received the first new forest certificate, in which the forest ownership and a bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct were clarified.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
There were 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village. Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village Council and villagers came with consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest property rights reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through a paid-use system in the condition of constant usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy.
# Villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or the future have the property rights. The group of people does not need to pay fees to the village council.
# The Village Council charges villagers if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in the village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016)<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=Lin|first=C.|date=2016|title=武平县林下经济发展状况研究|trans-title=Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County|url=|journal=现代商贸工业|volume=34|pages=50-51|doi=10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026|via=}}</ref> defined that the under-forest economy is to improve the overall utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />:
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />, the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan.

==Stakeholders Analysis ==
{| class="wikitable"
!High power
Low interest
!High power
High interest
|-
|
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''
|
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
|-
!Low power
High interest
!Low power
Low interest
|-
|
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''

* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
|
* '''Villagers whose livelihoods do not rely on any kinds of collective forests'''
|}

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the state government recognized the collective forest tenure reform, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people is entitled to the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since Jiewen's people collectively own the forests, households do not have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected from different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they do not only serve for the higher level of authorities but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, Li Yongxing, the village chief, is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
The groups of people listed below are not directly affected by the collective forest management in Jiewen, but play indispensable roles in the entire process.
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

== Discussion & Assessment ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhou|first=J.|date=2009|title=武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价|trans-title=Analyze the mode of the forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village|url=|journal=Green finance and accounting|volume=4|pages=40-41|doi=10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004|via=}}</ref>. First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in a new model, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period. Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degradation and boosted the forest security.

Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders. The under-forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform. It provides new opportunities and great potential for the development of collective forestry in Jiewen.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis, and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. In the same year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council enacted the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development as a beginning of paying attention to the collective forest system. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country in 2008 through the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform (Central Committee of the CPC & State Council, 2008)<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html|title=中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见|last=|first=|date=June 8, 2008|work=|access-date=November 22, 2018|department=Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council|trans-title=Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform}}</ref>. It displayed a similar structure with Jiewen's model which can be summarized as the redistribution of the forest ownership, the management rights, the disposal rights and the usufruct (Zhang et al., 2011)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhang|first=X.|last2=Xie|first2=Y.|last3=Wen|first3=H.|last4=Li|first4=H.|date=2011|title=Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China|url=http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212|journal=World forestry research|volume=24|issue=2|pages=64–69|via=}}</ref>.

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014)<ref>State Forestry Administration. 2014. General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived Nov. 13, 2018, from http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html.</ref>, about 60% of the forests in China are collectively owned, and the rest are state-owned. However, the proportion of forest stock by the collective forests are just around 37%, weighing less than the state forests compared to the forest ownership match ratio. It shows that the quality of the collective forests needs improve in an extended period.

Following the criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen and other communities still need to confront with difficulties of collective forest co-management. The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (SFA, 2014)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=2014|title=The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results|url=|department=The State Forestry Administration|journal=Forest Resource Management|location=Beijing|volume=1|pages=1-2|doi=10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001|issn=1002-6622|via=}}</ref> shows that the problem of deforestation in some areas is still severe with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization. It illustrates that some communities have not realized the essential of the under-forest economy which benefits the socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

On the other hand, the unclear concept of the forest right still causes issues. There is no completed and specific enactment concerning the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism. As a core in forestry, the forest rights should be a legal concept while it is more often used with unclear directions in a policy term (Zhang, L., 2010)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhang|first=L.|date=2010|title=Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights|url=|journal=Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition)|volume=10|issue=1|pages=87-92|doi=10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015|via=}}</ref>. Meanwhile, the legal rationality is also insufficient, current series of logical problems. To some extent, these have led to enormous obstacles to the connection between China's forest tenure reform policy and relevant legislation. Based on the current practice, the forest right can be defined as a limited concept targeting the utilization right and the usufruct of forests.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers: Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the community-based collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming, and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches to eveloping new forms of forestry economy.

* Village council: Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique. They also need to consider a scheduled timetable for the regulated meeting.
* Foresters: Gain advanced knowledge and technology for improving the quality and quantity of the collective forests.

* Local government: Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

* Forest Department: Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

* State Government: Strengthen legislation system for forest rights. Reduce the taxes and fees for the communities in forestry developement.

== References ==
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council. (2008). 中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见[Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html</nowiki>.

Jiewencun. 2018, May 1. In Baidubaike. Retrieved October 22, 2018, from <nowiki>https://baike.baidu.com/item</nowiki>.

Li, X. (2017). “林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]. Retrieved from <nowiki>https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707</nowiki>.

Lin, C. (2016). 武平县林下经济发展状况研究[Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County]. 现代商贸工业, 34, 50-51. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026</nowiki>.

Lu, W., Landell-Mills, N., Liu, J., Xu, J., Liu, C. (2002). Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China. London: International Institute for Environment and Development. <nowiki>https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting</nowiki>.

Menzies, N. K. (2007). Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management. New York: Columbia University Press.

State Forestry Administration. (1981).关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on several issues concerning the protection of forest and development of forestry]. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx</nowiki>?.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived from <nowiki>http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html</nowiki>.

State Forestry Administration. (2014). The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results. Beijing: The Forest Resource Management, pp. 1-2. <nowiki>http://doi.org/10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001</nowiki>.

Xie, Y., Gong, P., Han, X., & Wen, Y. (2014). The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity? Journal of forest economics, 20(2), 126-140. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001</nowiki>.

Zhang, L. (2010). Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights]. Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition), 10(1), 87-92. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015</nowiki>.

Zhang, X., Xie, Y., Wen, Y., & Li, H. (2011). Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China. World forestry research, 24(2), 64–69. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212</nowiki>.

Zhao, P. (2017). 武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County]. Retrieved October 28, 2018, from <nowiki>http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html</nowiki>.

Zhou, J. (2009). 武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价[Analyze the mode of the forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village]. Green finance and accounting, 4, 40-41. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004</nowiki>.

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-26T19:19:08Z

YIXUANYU: /* Recommendations */

This case study examines the development of the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village, Wuping County, Longyan City in Fujian Province, China. China has a really top-down political system. Mostly, if the highest government make a decision, the lower level administrations have to follow the order. It forms an efficient system to promote the policies but also can lead to lacking the involvement of people in the bottom. Jiewen's experience gives us a new sight about the community-based forest management. With the support of the local governments, local communities finally gained legitimacy through the collective forest co-management.

== Description ==

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting, and marketing timber products and under-forest economy for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with other places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four significant changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on some issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of the forest is collectively owned, and 14% is reserved for the state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are divided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a specific piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4" />.

However, the unified management of collective forests continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, and then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the collective community income, as a result of which the farmers do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department was sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017)<ref name=":0" /> mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide industrial materials was decreased from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in the 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as the establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state-owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>
== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017)<ref name=":3">{{Cite news|url=https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707|title=“林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]|last=Li|first=X.|date=2017|work=The Paper|access-date=November 3, 2018}}</ref>, he interviewed Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is a villager whose subsistence entirely rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In the 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers tough to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to be at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which seven were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing

=== A Favorable Turn ===
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

In order to start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there were no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businesspeople. Therefore, FDFP required the village first to average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of “how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests”.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Eventually, the Village Council divided the collective forests into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, making sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, Li Guilin received the first new forest certificate, in which the forest ownership and a bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct were clarified.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
There were 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village. Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village Council and villagers came with consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest property rights reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through a paid-use system in the condition of constant usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy.
# Villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or the future have the property rights. The group of people does not need to pay fees to the village council.
# The Village Council charges villagers if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in the village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016)<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=Lin|first=C.|date=2016|title=武平县林下经济发展状况研究|trans-title=Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County|url=|journal=现代商贸工业|volume=34|pages=50-51|doi=10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026|via=}}</ref> defined that the under-forest economy is to improve the overall utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />:
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />, the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan.

==Stakeholders Analysis ==

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the state government recognized the collective forest tenure reform, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people is entitled to the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since Jiewen's people collectively own the forests, households do not have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected from different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they do not only serve for the higher level of authorities but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, Li Yongxing, the village chief, is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
The groups of people listed below are not directly affected by the collective forest management in Jiewen, but play indispensable roles in the entire process.
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

== Discussion & Assessment ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhou|first=J.|date=2009|title=武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价|trans-title=Analyze the mode of the forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village|url=|journal=Green finance and accounting|volume=4|pages=40-41|doi=10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004|via=}}</ref>. First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in a new model, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period. Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degradation and boosted the forest security.

Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders. The under-forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform. It provides new opportunities and great potential for the development of collective forestry in Jiewen.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis, and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. In the same year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council enacted the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development as a beginning of paying attention to the collective forest system. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country in 2008 through the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform (Central Committee of the CPC & State Council, 2008)<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html|title=中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见|last=|first=|date=June 8, 2008|work=|access-date=November 22, 2018|department=Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council|trans-title=Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform}}</ref>. It displayed a similar structure with Jiewen's model which can be summarized as the redistribution of the forest ownership, the management rights, the disposal rights and the usufruct (Zhang et al., 2011)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhang|first=X.|last2=Xie|first2=Y.|last3=Wen|first3=H.|last4=Li|first4=H.|date=2011|title=Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China|url=http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212|journal=World forestry research|volume=24|issue=2|pages=64–69|via=}}</ref>.

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014)<ref>State Forestry Administration. 2014. General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived Nov. 13, 2018, from http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html.</ref>, about 60% of the forests in China are collectively owned, and the rest are state-owned. However, the proportion of forest stock by the collective forests are just around 37%, weighing less than the state forests compared to the forest ownership match ratio. It shows that the quality of the collective forests needs improve in an extended period.

Following the criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen and other communities still need to confront with difficulties of collective forest co-management. The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (SFA, 2014)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=2014|title=The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results|url=|department=The State Forestry Administration|journal=Forest Resource Management|location=Beijing|volume=1|pages=1-2|doi=10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001|issn=1002-6622|via=}}</ref> shows that the problem of deforestation in some areas is still severe with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization. It illustrates that some communities have not realized the essential of the under-forest economy which benefits the socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

On the other hand, the unclear concept of the forest right still causes issues. There is no completed and specific enactment concerning the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism. As a core in forestry, the forest rights should be a legal concept while it is more often used with unclear directions in a policy term (Zhang, L., 2010)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhang|first=L.|date=2010|title=Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights|url=|journal=Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition)|volume=10|issue=1|pages=87-92|doi=10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015|via=}}</ref>. Meanwhile, the legal rationality is also insufficient, current series of logical problems. To some extent, these have led to enormous obstacles to the connection between China's forest tenure reform policy and relevant legislation. Based on the current practice, the forest right can be defined as a limited concept targeting the utilization right and the usufruct of forests.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers: Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the community-based collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming, and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches to eveloping new forms of forestry economy.

* Village council: Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique. They also need to consider a scheduled timetable for the regulated meeting.
* Foresters: Gain advanced knowledge and technology for improving the quality and quantity of the collective forests.

* Local government: Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

* Forest Department: Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

* State Government: Strengthen legislation system for forest rights. Reduce the taxes and fees for the communities in forestry developement.

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-26T04:20:38Z

YIXUANYU: /* Description */

This case study examines the development of the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village, Wuping County, Longyan City in Fujian Province, China. China has a really top-down political system. Mostly, if the highest government make a decision, the lower level administrations have to follow the order. It forms an efficient system to promote the policies but also can lead to lacking the involvement of people in the bottom. Jiewen's experience gives us a new sight about the community-based forest management. With the support of the local governments, local communities finally gained legitimacy through the collective forest co-management.

== Description ==

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting, and marketing timber products and under-forest economy for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with other places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four significant changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on some issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of the forest is collectively owned, and 14% is reserved for the state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are divided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a specific piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4" />.

However, the unified management of collective forests continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, and then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the collective community income, as a result of which the farmers do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department was sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017)<ref name=":0" /> mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide industrial materials was decreased from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in the 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as the establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state-owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>
== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017)<ref name=":3">{{Cite news|url=https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707|title=“林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]|last=Li|first=X.|date=2017|work=The Paper|access-date=November 3, 2018}}</ref>, he interviewed Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is a villager whose subsistence entirely rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In the 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers tough to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to be at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which seven were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing

=== A Favorable Turn ===
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

In order to start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there were no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businesspeople. Therefore, FDFP required the village first to average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of “how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests”.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Eventually, the Village Council divided the collective forests into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, making sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, Li Guilin received the first new forest certificate, in which the forest ownership and a bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct were clarified.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
There were 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village. Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village Council and villagers came with consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest property rights reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through a paid-use system in the condition of constant usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy.
# Villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or the future have the property rights. The group of people does not need to pay fees to the village council.
# The Village Council charges villagers if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in the village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016)<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=Lin|first=C.|date=2016|title=武平县林下经济发展状况研究|trans-title=Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County|url=|journal=现代商贸工业|volume=34|pages=50-51|doi=10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026|via=}}</ref> defined that the under-forest economy is to improve the overall utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />:
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />, the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan.

==Stakeholders Analysis ==

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the state government recognized the collective forest tenure reform, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people is entitled to the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since Jiewen's people collectively own the forests, households do not have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected from different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they do not only serve for the higher level of authorities but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, Li Yongxing, the village chief, is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
The groups of people listed below are not directly affected by the collective forest management in Jiewen, but play indispensable roles in the entire process.
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

== Discussion & Assessment ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhou|first=J.|date=2009|title=武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价|trans-title=Analyze the mode of the forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village|url=|journal=Green finance and accounting|volume=4|pages=40-41|doi=10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004|via=}}</ref>. First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in a new model, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period. Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degradation and boosted the forest security.

Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders. The under-forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform. It provides new opportunities and great potential for the development of collective forestry in Jiewen.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis, and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. In the same year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council enacted the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development as a beginning of paying attention to the collective forest system. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country in 2008 through the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform (Central Committee of the CPC & State Council, 2008)<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html|title=中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见|last=|first=|date=June 8, 2008|work=|access-date=November 22, 2018|department=Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council|trans-title=Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform}}</ref>. It displayed a similar structure with Jiewen's model which can be summarized as the redistribution of the forest ownership, the management rights, the disposal rights and the usufruct (Zhang et al., 2011)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhang|first=X.|last2=Xie|first2=Y.|last3=Wen|first3=H.|last4=Li|first4=H.|date=2011|title=Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China|url=http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212|journal=World forestry research|volume=24|issue=2|pages=64–69|via=}}</ref>.

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014)<ref>State Forestry Administration. 2014. General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived Nov. 13, 2018, from http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html.</ref>, about 60% of the forests in China are collectively owned, and the rest are state-owned. However, the proportion of forest stock by the collective forests are just around 37%, weighing less than the state forests compared to the forest ownership match ratio. It shows that the quality of the collective forests needs improve in an extended period.

Following the criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen and other communities still need to confront with difficulties of collective forest co-management. The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (SFA, 2014)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=2014|title=The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results|url=|department=The State Forestry Administration|journal=Forest Resource Management|location=Beijing|volume=1|pages=1-2|doi=10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001|issn=1002-6622|via=}}</ref> shows that the problem of deforestation in some areas is still severe with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization. It illustrates that some communities have not realized the essential of the under-forest economy which benefits the socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

On the other hand, the unclear concept of the forest right still causes issues. There is no completed and specific enactment concerning the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism. As a core in forestry, the forest rights should be a legal concept while it is more often used with unclear directions in a policy term (Zhang, L., 2010)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhang|first=L.|date=2010|title=Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights|url=|journal=Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition)|volume=10|issue=1|pages=87-92|doi=10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015|via=}}</ref>. Meanwhile, the legal rationality is also insufficient, current series of logical problems. To some extent, these have led to enormous obstacles to the connection between China's forest tenure reform policy and relevant legislation. Based on the current practice, the forest right can be defined as a limited concept targeting the utilization right and the usufruct of forests.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers: Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the community-based collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming, and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches to eveloping new forms of forestry economy.

* Village council: Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique. They also need to consider a scheduled timetable for the regulated meeting.

* Local government: Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

* The Forest Department: Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

* The State Government: Strengthen clear legislation for forest rights in the forestry system.

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-26T04:19:29Z

YIXUANYU:

This case study examines the development of the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village, Wuping County, Longyan City in Fujian Province, China. China has a really top-down political system. Mostly, if the highest government make a decision, the lower level administrations have to follow the order. It forms an efficient system to promote the policies but also can lead to lacking the involvement of people in the bottom. Jiewen's experience gives us a new sight about the community-based forest management. With the support of the local governments, local communities finally gained legitimacy through the collective forest co-management.

== '''Description''' ==

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting, and marketing timber products and under-forest economy for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with other places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four significant changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on some issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of the forest is collectively owned, and 14% is reserved for the state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are divided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a specific piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4" />.

However, the unified management of collective forests continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, and then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the collective community income, as a result of which the farmers do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department was sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017)<ref name=":0" /> mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide industrial materials was decreased from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in the 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as the establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state-owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>
== '''Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village''' ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017)<ref name=":3">{{Cite news|url=https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707|title=“林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]|last=Li|first=X.|date=2017|work=The Paper|access-date=November 3, 2018}}</ref>, he interviewed Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is a villager whose subsistence entirely rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In the 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers tough to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to be at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which seven were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing

=== A Favorable Turn ===
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

In order to start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there were no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businesspeople. Therefore, FDFP required the village first to average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of “how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests”.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Eventually, the Village Council divided the collective forests into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, making sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, Li Guilin received the first new forest certificate, in which the forest ownership and a bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct were clarified.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
There were 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village. Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village Council and villagers came with consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest property rights reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through a paid-use system in the condition of constant usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy.
# Villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or the future have the property rights. The group of people does not need to pay fees to the village council.
# The Village Council charges villagers if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in the village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016)<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=Lin|first=C.|date=2016|title=武平县林下经济发展状况研究|trans-title=Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County|url=|journal=现代商贸工业|volume=34|pages=50-51|doi=10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026|via=}}</ref> defined that the under-forest economy is to improve the overall utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />:
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />, the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan.

=='''Stakeholders Analysis''' ==

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the state government recognized the collective forest tenure reform, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people is entitled to the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since Jiewen's people collectively own the forests, households do not have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected from different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they do not only serve for the higher level of authorities but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, Li Yongxing, the village chief, is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
The groups of people listed below are not directly affected by the collective forest management in Jiewen, but play indispensable roles in the entire process.
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

== '''Discussion & Assessment''' ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhou|first=J.|date=2009|title=武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价|trans-title=Analyze the mode of the forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village|url=|journal=Green finance and accounting|volume=4|pages=40-41|doi=10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004|via=}}</ref>. First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in a new model, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period. Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degradation and boosted the forest security.

Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders. The under-forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform. It provides new opportunities and great potential for the development of collective forestry in Jiewen.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis, and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. In the same year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council enacted the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development as a beginning of paying attention to the collective forest system. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country in 2008 through the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform (Central Committee of the CPC & State Council, 2008)<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html|title=中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见|last=|first=|date=June 8, 2008|work=|access-date=November 22, 2018|department=Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council|trans-title=Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform}}</ref>. It displayed a similar structure with Jiewen's model which can be summarized as the redistribution of the forest ownership, the management rights, the disposal rights and the usufruct (Zhang et al., 2011)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhang|first=X.|last2=Xie|first2=Y.|last3=Wen|first3=H.|last4=Li|first4=H.|date=2011|title=Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China|url=http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212|journal=World forestry research|volume=24|issue=2|pages=64–69|via=}}</ref>.

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014)<ref>State Forestry Administration. 2014. General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived Nov. 13, 2018, from http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html.</ref>, about 60% of the forests in China are collectively owned, and the rest are state-owned. However, the proportion of forest stock by the collective forests are just around 37%, weighing less than the state forests compared to the forest ownership match ratio. It shows that the quality of the collective forests needs improve in an extended period.

Following the criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen and other communities still need to confront with difficulties of collective forest co-management. The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (SFA, 2014)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=2014|title=The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results|url=|department=The State Forestry Administration|journal=Forest Resource Management|location=Beijing|volume=1|pages=1-2|doi=10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001|issn=1002-6622|via=}}</ref> shows that the problem of deforestation in some areas is still severe with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization. It illustrates that some communities have not realized the essential of the under-forest economy which benefits the socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

On the other hand, the unclear concept of the forest right still causes issues. There is no completed and specific enactment concerning the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism. As a core in forestry, the forest rights should be a legal concept while it is more often used with unclear directions in a policy term (Zhang, L., 2010)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhang|first=L.|date=2010|title=Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights|url=|journal=Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition)|volume=10|issue=1|pages=87-92|doi=10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015|via=}}</ref>. Meanwhile, the legal rationality is also insufficient, current series of logical problems. To some extent, these have led to enormous obstacles to the connection between China's forest tenure reform policy and relevant legislation. Based on the current practice, the forest right can be defined as a limited concept targeting the utilization right and the usufruct of forests.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers: Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the community-based collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming, and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches to eveloping new forms of forestry economy.

* Village council: Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique. They also need to consider a scheduled timetable for the regulated meeting.

* Local government: Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

* The Forest Department: Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

* The State Government: Strengthen clear legislation for forest rights in the forestry system.

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-26T03:26:08Z

YIXUANYU: /* Achievements */

This case study examines the development of the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village, Wuping County, Longyan City in Fujian Province, China. China has a really top-down political system. Mostly, if the highest government make a decision, the lower level administrations have to follow the order. It forms an efficient system to promote the policies but also can lead to lacking of the involvement of people in the bottom. Jiewen's experience gives us a new sight about the community-based forest management. With the support of the local governments, local communities finally gained legitimacy through the collective forest co-management.

== '''Description''' ==

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting and marketing timber products and under-forest economy for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with other places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four major changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes were disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on a number of issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of forest is collectively owned and 14% is reserved for state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling a communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are devided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a certain piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4" />.

However, the unified management of collective forests was still continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the community collective income, as a result of which the farmers actually do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department were sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017)<ref name=":0" /> mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide commercial materials was reduced from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>
== '''Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village''' ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017)<ref name=":3">{{Cite news|url=https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707|title=“林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]|last=Li|first=X.|date=2017|work=The Paper|access-date=November 3, 2018}}</ref>, Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform were interviewed. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is an elder villager whose subsistence entirly rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers difficult to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to being at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which 7 were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing

=== A Favorable Turn ===
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

To start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there was no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businessmen. Therefore, FDFP required the village to first average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of “how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests”.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Eventually, the collective forests were divided into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, to make sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, the first new forest certificate was given to Li Guilin, which symbolized the clarification forest ownership and bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
There were totally 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village. Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village council and villagers came with a consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest property rights reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through paid-use system in the condition of unchanged usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy.
# villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or in the future have the property rights. The group of people has no need to pay fees to the village council.
# Villagers are charged by the Village Council if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016)<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=Lin|first=C.|date=2016|title=武平县林下经济发展状况研究|trans-title=Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County|url=|journal=现代商贸工业|volume=34|pages=50-51|doi=10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026|via=}}</ref> definated that the under-forest economy is to improve the comprehensive utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />:
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />, the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan.

=='''Stakeholders Analysis''' ==

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the collective forest tenure reform was recognized by the state government, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people are entitled with the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since the forests in Jiewen are collectively owned, households don't have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected in different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they are not only serve for higher level of authorities, but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, Li Yongxing, the village chief, is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
The groups of people listed below are not directly affected by the collective forest management in Jiewen, but still play incontestant roles in the entire process.
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

== '''Discussion & Assessment''' ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhou|first=J.|date=2009|title=武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价|trans-title=Analyze the mode of the forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village|url=|journal=Green finance and accounting|volume=4|pages=40-41|doi=10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004|via=}}</ref>. First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in a new model, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period. Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degredation and boosted the forest security. Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders. The under-forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform. It provides new opportunities and great potencial for development of collective forestry in Jiewen.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. In the same year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council enacted the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development as a begining of paying attention to the collective forest system. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country in 2008 through the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform (Central Committee of the CPC & State Council, 2008)<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html|title=中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见|last=|first=|date=June 8, 2008|work=|access-date=November 22, 2018|department=Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council|trans-title=Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform}}</ref>. It displayed a similar structure with Jiewen's model which can be summurized as the redistribution of the forest ownership, the management rights, the disposal rights and the usufruct (Zhang et al., 2011)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhang|first=X.|last2=Xie|first2=Y.|last3=Wen|first3=H.|last4=Li|first4=H.|date=2011|title=Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China|url=http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212|journal=World forestry research|volume=24|issue=2|pages=64–69|via=}}</ref>.

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014)<ref>State Forestry Administration. 2014. General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived Nov. 13, 2018, from http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html.</ref>, about 60% of the forests in China are collectively owned and the rest are state-owned. However, the propotion of forest stock by the collective forests are just around 37%, weighing less than the state forests compared to the forest ownership match ratio. It shows that the quality of the collective forests need to be improved in a long period of time.

Following the criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen and other communities still need to confront with difficulties of collective forest co-management. The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (SFA, 2014)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=2014|title=The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results|url=|department=The State Forestry Administration|journal=Forest Resource Management|location=Beijing|volume=1|pages=1-2|doi=10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001|issn=1002-6622|via=}}</ref> shows that the problem of deforestation in some areas is still severe with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization. It illustrates that some communities haven't realized the essential of the under-forest economy which benefits the socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

On the other hand, the unclear concept of the forest right still causes issues. There is no completed and specific enactment clarifying the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism. As a core in forestry, the forest rights should be a legal concept while it is more often used with unclear directions in a policy term (Zhang, L., 2010)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhang|first=L.|date=2010|title=Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights|url=|journal=Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition)|volume=10|issue=1|pages=87-92|doi=10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015|via=}}</ref>. Meanwhile, the legal rationality is also insufficient, exsiting series of logical problems. To some extent, these have led to enormous obstacles in the connection between China's forest tenure reform policy and relevant legislation. Based on the current practice, the forest right can be defined as a limited concept targeting the utilization right and the usufruct of forests.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers: Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches in developing new forms of forestry economy. For those who

* Village council: Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique, etc. A scheduled timetable for regulated meeting can be considered.

* Local government: Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

* The Forest Department: Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

* The State Government: Strenthen clear legislation for the forest rights.

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-25T11:18:42Z

YIXUANYU: /* Deficiencies */

Figure1: Timeline of the Collective Forest Tenure reform in Jiewen

Figure2: Stakeholders involved

== '''Description''' ==

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting and marketing timber products and under-forest farming products for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with most places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management in China.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four major changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes were disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on a number of issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of forest is collectively owned and 14% is reserved for state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling a communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are devided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a certain piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4" />.

However, the unified management of collective forests was still continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the community collective income, as a result of which the farmers actually do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department were sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017)<ref name=":0" /> mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide commercial materials was reduced from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>
== '''Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village''' ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017)<ref name=":3">{{Cite news|url=https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707|title=“林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]|last=Li|first=X.|date=2017|work=The Paper|access-date=November 3, 2018}}</ref>, Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform were interviewed. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is an elder villager whose subsistence entirly rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers difficult to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to being at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which 7 were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing

=== A Favorable Turn ===
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

To start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there was no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businessmen. Therefore, FDFP required the village to first average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of “how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests”.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Eventually, the collective forests were divided into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, to make sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, the first new forest certificate was given to Li Guilin, which symbolized the clarification forest ownership and bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
There were totally 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village. Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village council and villagers came with a consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest property rights reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through paid-use system in the condition of unchanged usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy.
# villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or in the future have the property rights. The group of people has no need to pay fees to the village council.
# Villagers are charged by the Village Council if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016)<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=Lin|first=C.|date=2016|title=武平县林下经济发展状况研究|trans-title=Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County|url=|journal=现代商贸工业|volume=34|pages=50-51|doi=10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026|via=}}</ref> definated that the under-forest economy is to improve the comprehensive utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />:
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />, the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan.

=='''Stakeholders Analysis''' ==

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the collective forest tenure reform was recognized by the state government, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people are entitled with the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since the forests in Jiewen are collectively owned, households don't have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected in different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they are not only serve for higher level of authorities, but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, Li Yongxing, the village chief, is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''
The groups of people listed above are

== '''Discussion & Assessment''' ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhou|first=J.|date=2009|title=武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价|trans-title=Analyze the mode of the forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village|url=|journal=Green finance and accounting|volume=4|pages=40-41|doi=10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004|via=}}</ref>. First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in a new model, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period. Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degredation and boosted the forest security. Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. In the same year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council enacted the Decision on Accelerating Forestry Development as a begining of paying attention to the collective forest system. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country in 2008 through the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform (Central Committee of the CPC & State Council, 2008)<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.forestry.gov.cn/main/3131/20080608/468085.html|title=中共中央、国务院关于全面推进集体林权制度改革的意见|last=|first=|date=June 8, 2008|work=|access-date=November 22, 2018|department=Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council|trans-title=Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Collective Forest Tenure Reform}}</ref>. Below is the status of the collective forest tenure reform in China (Zhang et al., 2011)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhang|first=X.|last2=Xie|first2=Y.|last3=Wen|first3=H.|last4=Li|first4=H.|date=2011|title=Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China|url=http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212|journal=World forestry research|volume=24|issue=2|pages=64–69|via=}}</ref>.
* Redistribute the forest ownership
Based on the ownership of the collective forest, the forestland is allocated to householders in the village through the household responsibility system. For the collective forestlands that can be legally transferred but not appropriate for the household responsibility system, the ownership can be implemented through demutualization, dividend policy, and other measures. In addition, the village council has legal rights to keep some parts of the forestland for unified management.

Above all, clarifying property rights become the priority of the reform.
* Redistribute the forest management rights
Reduce the intervention of administration on the production and management activities of the collective forest management entity. Maximum the distribution of the management rights to the householders. For commercial forests, householders can decide their own business direction and business model according to law. They have initiatives to sell timber products to the market, breaking the monopoly of forest products market caused by administrative intervention. For public ecological forests, people are allowed to use forest resources in an orderly manner under the premise of ensuring the ecological benefits. The government encourages the communities to develop under-forest industries and carry out forest eco-tours to obtain income from non-timber forest products.

To sum up, releasing management rights and reducing forest taxes and fees are the two main contents of this reform.
* Distribution of the disposal rights
Based on the redistribution of the forest ownership, the disposal rights belong to householders in communities. To be more specific, householders can transfer, mortgage, and joint venture the forestland if they don’t change the land usage. According to these three kinds of behavior, the group of people is able to dispose of the forest resources as their property. The term transfer means giving up one-time flow income through initiative forest management rights in a short or long period. To avoid revenue loss during the process of the transfer, standardization of forestland transfer is of a great significance in the reform.
* Redistribution of the usufruct
The usufruct of householders is first manifested as the income from contracted forest land, accompanied by the right to use forestland and trees. The realization of income is limited by the production cost. Therefore, the adjustment of forestry taxes and fees reflects the redistribution of income rights between different stakeholders in villages, townships (towns) and counties.

In addition, if collective forests owned by the community or the householders is levied, the compensation fees (for forest land, ground attachments and forest trees, and resettlement subsidies, etc.) shall be paid in full by the government according to the law. Meanwhile, the social security fees of the land-expropriated also shall be prepared. Householders can receive corresponding compensation for ecological benefits in the case of the public ecological forests.

The reduction of taxes and fees plays a direct and important role in the redistribution of usufruct.

Forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform.

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014)<ref>State Forestry Administration. 2014. General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived Nov. 13, 2018, from http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html.</ref>, about 60% of the forests in China are collectively owned and the rest are state-owned. However, the propotion of forest stock by the collective forests are just around 37%, weighing less than the state forests compared to the forest ownership match ratio. It shows that the quality of the collective forests need to be improved in a long period of time.

Following the criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen and other communities still need to confront with difficulties of collective forest co-management. The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (SFA, 2014)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=2014|title=The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results|url=|department=The State Forestry Administration|journal=Forest Resource Management|location=Beijing|volume=1|pages=1-2|doi=10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001|issn=1002-6622|via=}}</ref> shows that the problem of deforestation in some areas is still severe with the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization. It illustrates that some communities haven't realized the essential of the under-forest economy which benefits the socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

On the other hand, the unclear concept of the forest right still causes issues. There is no completed and specific enactment clarifying the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism. As a core in forestry, the forest rights should be a legal concept while it is more often used with unclear directions in a policy term (Zhang, L., 2010)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhang|first=L.|date=2010|title=Misunderstanding and rational cognition of forest rights|url=|journal=Journal of China University of Geosciences (Social Sciences Edition)|volume=10|issue=1|pages=87-92|doi=10.16493/j.cnki.42-1627/c.2010.01.015|via=}}</ref>. Meanwhile, the legal rationality is also insufficient. To some extent, these have led to enormous obstacles in the connection between China's forest tenure reform policy and relevant legislation. Based on the current practice, the forest right can be defined as a limited concept targeting the utilization right and the usufruct of forests.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers:

Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches in developing new forms of forestry economy. For those who
* Village council:

Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique, etc.

A scheduled timetable for regulated meeting.
* Local government:

Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.
* The Forest Department:

Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.
* The State Government:

A clear legislation for entitlement of the collective forest rights.

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-25T04:46:36Z

YIXUANYU: /* Stakeholders Analysis */

Figure1: Timeline of the Collective Forest Tenure reform in Jiewen

Figure2: Stakeholders involved

== '''Description''' ==

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting and marketing timber products and under-forest farming products for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with most places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management in China.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four major changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes were disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on a number of issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of forest is collectively owned and 14% is reserved for state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling a communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are devided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a certain piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4" />.

However, the unified management of collective forests was still continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the community collective income, as a result of which the farmers actually do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department were sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017)<ref name=":0" /> mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide commercial materials was reduced from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>
== '''Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village''' ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017)<ref name=":3">{{Cite news|url=https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707|title=“林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]|last=Li|first=X.|date=2017|work=The Paper|access-date=November 3, 2018}}</ref>, Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform were interviewed. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is an elder villager whose subsistence entirly rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers difficult to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to being at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which 7 were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing

=== A Favorable Turn ===
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

To start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there was no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businessmen. Therefore, FDFP required the village to first average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of “how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests”.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Eventually, the collective forests were divided into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, to make sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, the first new forest certificate was given to Li Guilin, which symbolized the clarification forest ownership and bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
There were totally 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village. Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village council and villagers came with a consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest property rights reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through paid-use system in the condition of unchanged usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy.
# villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or in the future have the property rights. The group of people has no need to pay fees to the village council.
# Villagers are charged by the Village Council if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016)<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=Lin|first=C.|date=2016|title=武平县林下经济发展状况研究|trans-title=Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County|url=|journal=现代商贸工业|volume=34|pages=50-51|doi=10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026|via=}}</ref> definated that the under-forest economy is to improve the comprehensive utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />:
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />, the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan.

=='''Stakeholders Analysis''' ==

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the collective forest tenure reform was recognized by the state government, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people are entitled with the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since the forests in Jiewen are collectively owned, households don't have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected in different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they are not only serve for higher level of authorities, but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, Li Yongxing, the village chief, is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''
The groups of people listed above are

== '''Discussion & Assessment''' ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhou|first=J.|date=2009|title=武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价|trans-title=Analyze the mode of the forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village|url=|journal=Green finance and accounting|volume=4|pages=40-41|doi=10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004|via=}}</ref>. First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in a new model, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period. Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degredation and boosted the forest security. Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders.

More profoundly, Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. Below is the status of the collective forest tenure reform in China (Zhang et al., 2011)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhang|first=X.|last2=Xie|first2=Y.|last3=Wen|first3=H.|last4=Li|first4=H.|date=2011|title=Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China|url=http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212|journal=World forestry research|volume=24|issue=2|pages=64–69|via=}}</ref>.
* Redistribute the forest ownership
Based on the ownership of the collective forest, the forestland is allocated to householders in the village through the household responsibility system. For the collective forestlands that can be legally transferred but not appropriate for the household responsibility system, the ownership can be implemented through demutualization, dividend policy, and other measures. In addition, the village council has legal rights to keep some parts of the forestland for unified management.

Above all, clarifying property rights become the priority of the reform.
* Redistribute the forest management rights
Reduce the intervention of administration on the production and management activities of the collective forest management entity. Maximum the distribution of the management rights to the householders. For commercial forests, householders can decide their own business direction and business model according to law. They have initiatives to sell timber products to the market, breaking the monopoly of forest products market caused by administrative intervention. For public ecological forests, people are allowed to use forest resources in an orderly manner under the premise of ensuring the ecological benefits. The government encourages the communities to develop under-forest industries and carry out forest eco-tours to obtain income from non-timber forest products.

To sum up, releasing management rights and reducing forest taxes and fees are the two main contents of this reform.
* Distribution of the disposal rights
Based on the redistribution of the forest ownership, the disposal rights belong to householders in communities. To be more specific, householders can transfer, mortgage, and joint venture the forestland if they don’t change the land usage. According to these three kinds of behavior, the group of people is able to dispose of the forest resources as their property. The term transfer means giving up one-time flow income through initiative forest management rights in a short or long period. To avoid revenue loss during the process of the transfer, standardization of forestland transfer is of a great significance in the reform.
* Redistribution of the usufruct
The usufruct of householders is first manifested as the income from contracted forest land, accompanied by the right to use forestland and trees. The realization of income is limited by the production cost. Therefore, the adjustment of forestry taxes and fees reflects the redistribution of income rights between different stakeholders in villages, townships (towns) and counties.

In addition, if collective forests owned by the community or the householders is levied, the compensation fees (for forest land, ground attachments and forest trees, and resettlement subsidies, etc.) shall be paid in full by the government according to the law. Meanwhile, the social security fees of the land-expropriated also shall be prepared. Householders can receive corresponding compensation for ecological benefits in the case of the public ecological forests.

The reduction of taxes and fees plays a direct and important role in the redistribution of usufruct.

Forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform.

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014)<ref>State Forestry Administration. 2014. General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived Nov. 13, 2018, from http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html.</ref>,

The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (State Forestry Administration, 2014)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=2014|title=The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results|url=|department=The State Forestry Administration|journal=Forest Resource Management|location=Beijing|volume=1|pages=1-2|doi=10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001|issn=1002-6622|via=}}</ref> shows that

Following criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen still need to confront with the challenges of collective forest co-management.

The unclear concepts of the forest right still cause issues. There is no completed and specific enactment clarifying the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers:

Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches in developing new forms of forestry economy. For those who
* Village council:

Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique, etc.

A scheduled timetable for regulated meeting.
* Local government:

Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.
* The Forest Department:

Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.
* The State Government:

A clear legislation for entitlement of the collective forest rights.

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-25T04:42:43Z

YIXUANYU: /* Achievements */

Figure1: Timeline of the Collective Forest Tenure reform in Jiewen

Figure2: Stakeholders involved

== '''Description''' ==

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting and marketing timber products and under-forest farming products for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with most places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management in China.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four major changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes were disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on a number of issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of forest is collectively owned and 14% is reserved for state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling a communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are devided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a certain piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4" />.

However, the unified management of collective forests was still continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the community collective income, as a result of which the farmers actually do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department were sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017)<ref name=":0" /> mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide commercial materials was reduced from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>
== '''Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village''' ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017)<ref name=":3">{{Cite news|url=https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707|title=“林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]|last=Li|first=X.|date=2017|work=The Paper|access-date=November 3, 2018}}</ref>, Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform were interviewed. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is an elder villager whose subsistence entirly rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers difficult to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to being at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which 7 were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing

=== A Favorable Turn ===
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

To start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there was no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businessmen. Therefore, FDFP required the village to first average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of “how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests”.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Eventually, the collective forests were divided into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, to make sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, the first new forest certificate was given to Li Guilin, which symbolized the clarification forest ownership and bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
There were totally 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village. Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village council and villagers came with a consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest property rights reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through paid-use system in the condition of unchanged usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy.
# villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or in the future have the property rights. The group of people has no need to pay fees to the village council.
# Villagers are charged by the Village Council if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016)<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=Lin|first=C.|date=2016|title=武平县林下经济发展状况研究|trans-title=Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County|url=|journal=现代商贸工业|volume=34|pages=50-51|doi=10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026|via=}}</ref> definated that the under-forest economy is to improve the comprehensive utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />:
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />, the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan.

==Stakeholders Analysis ==

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the collective forest tenure reform was recognized by the state government, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people are entitled with the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since the forests in Jiewen are collectively owned, households don't have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected in different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they are not only serve for higher level of authorities, but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, Li Yongxing, the village chief, is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''
The groups of people listed above are

== Discussion & Assessment ==

=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village (Zhou, 2009)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhou|first=J.|date=2009|title=武平县捷文村集体林权制度改革模式的分析评价|trans-title=Analyze the mode of the forest tenure reform in Jiewen Village|url=|journal=Green finance and accounting|volume=4|pages=40-41|doi=10.14153/j.cnki.lsck.2009.04.004|via=}}</ref>. First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in a new model, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period. Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degredation and boosted the forest security. Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders.

More profoundly, Jiewen provided a valuable experiences for the popularization of collective forest tenure reform in China. Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. Below is the status of the collective forest tenure reform in China (Zhang et al., 2011)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhang|first=X.|last2=Xie|first2=Y.|last3=Wen|first3=H.|last4=Li|first4=H.|date=2011|title=Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China|url=http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212|journal=World forestry research|volume=24|issue=2|pages=64–69|via=}}</ref>.
* Redistribute the forest ownership
Based on the ownership of the collective forest, the forestland is allocated to householders in the village through the household responsibility system. For the collective forestlands that can be legally transferred but not appropriate for the household responsibility system, the ownership can be implemented through demutualization, dividend policy, and other measures. In addition, the village council has legal rights to keep some parts of the forestland for unified management.

Above all, clarifying property rights become the priority of the reform.
* Redistribute the forest management rights
Reduce the intervention of administration on the production and management activities of the collective forest management entity. Maximum the distribution of the management rights to the householders. For commercial forests, householders can decide their own business direction and business model according to law. They have initiatives to sell timber products to the market, breaking the monopoly of forest products market caused by administrative intervention. For public ecological forests, people are allowed to use forest resources in an orderly manner under the premise of ensuring the ecological benefits. The government encourages the communities to develop under-forest industries and carry out forest eco-tours to obtain income from non-timber forest products.

To sum up, releasing management rights and reducing forest taxes and fees are the two main contents of this reform.
* Distribution of the disposal rights
Based on the redistribution of the forest ownership, the disposal rights belong to householders in communities. To be more specific, householders can transfer, mortgage, and joint venture the forestland if they don’t change the land usage. According to these three kinds of behavior, the group of people is able to dispose of the forest resources as their property. The term transfer means giving up one-time flow income through initiative forest management rights in a short or long period. To avoid revenue loss during the process of the transfer, standardization of forestland transfer is of a great significance in the reform.
* Redistribution of the usufruct
The usufruct of householders is first manifested as the income from contracted forest land, accompanied by the right to use forestland and trees. The realization of income is limited by the production cost. Therefore, the adjustment of forestry taxes and fees reflects the redistribution of income rights between different stakeholders in villages, townships (towns) and counties.

In addition, if collective forests owned by the community or the householders is levied, the compensation fees (for forest land, ground attachments and forest trees, and resettlement subsidies, etc.) shall be paid in full by the government according to the law. Meanwhile, the social security fees of the land-expropriated also shall be prepared. Householders can receive corresponding compensation for ecological benefits in the case of the public ecological forests.

The reduction of taxes and fees plays a direct and important role in the redistribution of usufruct.

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014)<ref>State Forestry Administration. 2014. General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived Nov. 13, 2018, from http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html.</ref>,

The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (State Forestry Administration, 2014)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=2014|title=The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results|url=|department=The State Forestry Administration|journal=Forest Resource Management|location=Beijing|volume=1|pages=1-2|doi=10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001|issn=1002-6622|via=}}</ref> shows that

Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used

Jiewen, such a small village’s practice in forest tenure reform has large-scale influences for the whole forestry system in China.

   Forest economy plays an incontestable role in the process of the collective forest tenure reform.

   Following criterions of the sustainable forest management, Jiewen still need to confront with the challenges of collective forest co-management.

   The unclear concepts of the forest right still cause issues. There is no completed and specific enactment clarifying the definition of the forest right in terms of the collective forest and forest market mechanism.

==Recommendations==
* Villagers:

Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches in developing new forms of forestry economy. For those who
* Village council:

Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique, etc.

A scheduled timetable for regulated meeting.
* Local government:

Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.
* The Forest Department:

Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.
* The State Government:

A clear legislation for entitlement of the collective forest rights.

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-25T04:18:42Z

YIXUANYU: /* A Favourable Turn */

Figure1: Timeline of the Collective Forest Tenure reform in Jiewen

Figure2: Stakeholders involved

== '''Description''' ==

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting and marketing timber products and under-forest farming products for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with most places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management in China.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four major changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes were disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on a number of issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of forest is collectively owned and 14% is reserved for state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling a communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are devided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a certain piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4" />.

However, the unified management of collective forests was still continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the community collective income, as a result of which the farmers actually do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department were sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017)<ref name=":0" /> mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide commercial materials was reduced from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>
== '''Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village''' ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017)<ref name=":3">{{Cite news|url=https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707|title=“林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]|last=Li|first=X.|date=2017|work=The Paper|access-date=November 3, 2018}}</ref>, Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform were interviewed. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is an elder villager whose subsistence entirly rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers difficult to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to being at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which 7 were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing

=== A Favorable Turn ===
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

To start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there was no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businessmen. Therefore, FDFP required the village to first average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of “how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests”.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Eventually, the collective forests were divided into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, to make sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, the first new forest certificate was given to Li Guilin, which symbolized the clarification forest ownership and bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
There were totally 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village. Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village council and villagers came with a consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest property rights reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through paid-use system in the condition of unchanged usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy.
# villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or in the future have the property rights. The group of people has no need to pay fees to the village council.
# Villagers are charged by the Village Council if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== Further Forestry Development ===
Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded.

Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016)<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=Lin|first=C.|date=2016|title=武平县林下经济发展状况研究|trans-title=Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County|url=|journal=现代商贸工业|volume=34|pages=50-51|doi=10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026|via=}}</ref> definated that the under-forest economy is to improve the comprehensive utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />:
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism: build nature reserve park relying on rich forest resources and develop ecological-friendly tourism.
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />, the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan.

==Stakeholders Analysis ==

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''Villagers who harvest timber from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in Jiewen Village'''
* '''Villagers who develop under-forest economy'''
Before the collective forest tenure reform was recognized by the state government, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people are entitled with the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since the forests in Jiewen are collectively owned, households don't have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
In Jiewen Village, the village council members are elected in different villager teams. They participate in the collective forest allocation the same as other villagers. It means that they are not only serve for higher level of authorities, but also mainly represent the local communities' interests. Similarly, Li Yongxing, the village chief, is one of the Jiewen's people. These two stakeholders' livelihood can be directly affected by the collective forest in Jiewen. Therefore, they should be regarded as affected stakeholders.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''
The groups of people listed above are

==Discussion==
=== Achievements ===
After the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen solved many of the main problems that existed in the village. First, the new forest certificate ensures that every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests. They gained a dominant position of forests in a new model, moving forward to a better situation of the ownership of forestry property rights compared to the "three-set" forestry period. Second, the income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved. Jiewen's people turned to be more responsible for the forestry management system, which alleviated the situation of collective forest degredation and boosted the forest security. Meanwhile, the financial revenue of the village increased as a result of the successful co-management among different stakeholders.

More profoundly, Jiewen provided a valuable experiences for the popularization of collective forest tenure reform in China. It also contributed to the state forestry management. Below is the status of the collective forest tenure reform in China (Zhang et al., 2011)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zhang|first=X.|last2=Xie|first2=Y.|last3=Wen|first3=H.|last4=Li|first4=H.|date=2011|title=Status and prospect on collective forest tenure reform in China|url=http://www.sjlyyj.com/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=20110212|journal=World forestry research|volume=24|issue=2|pages=64–69|via=}}</ref>.
* Redistribute the forest ownership
Based on the ownership of the collective forest, the forestland is allocated to householders in the village through the household responsibility system. For the collective forestlands that can be legally transferred but not appropriate for the household responsibility system, the ownership can be implemented through demutualization, dividend policy, and other measures. In addition, the village council has legal rights to keep some parts of the forestland for unified management.

Above all, clarifying property rights become the priority of the reform.
* Redistribute the forest management rights
Reduce the intervention of administration on the production and management activities of the collective forest management entity. Maximum the distribution of the management rights to the householders. For commercial forests, householders can decide their own business direction and business model according to law. They have initiatives to sell timber products to the market, breaking the monopoly of forest products market caused by administrative intervention. For public ecological forests, people are allowed to use forest resources in an orderly manner under the premise of ensuring the ecological benefits. The government encourages the communities to develop under-forest industries and carry out forest eco-tours to obtain income from non-timber forest products.

To sum up, releasing management rights and reducing forest taxes and fees are the two main contents of this reform.
* Distribution of the disposal rights
Based on the redistribution of the forest ownership, the disposal rights belong to householders in communities. To be more specific, householders can transfer, mortgage, and joint venture the forestland if they don’t change the land usage. According to these three kinds of behavior, the group of people is able to dispose of the forest resources as their property. The term transfer means giving up one-time flow income through initiative forest management rights in a short or long period. To avoid revenue loss during the process of the transfer, standardization of forestland transfer come as another significant concept of the reform.
* Redistribution of the usufruct
The usufruct of householders is first manifested as the income from contracted forest land, accompanied by the right to use forestland and trees. The realization of income is limited by the production cost. Therefore, the adjustment of forestry taxes and fees reflects the redistribution of income rights between different stakeholders in villages, townships (towns) and counties.

In addition, if collective forests owned by the community or the householders is levied, the compensation fees (for forest land, ground attachments and forest trees, and resettlement subsidies, etc.) shall be paid in full by the government according to the law. Meanwhile, the social security fees of the land-expropriated also shall be prepared. Householders can receive corresponding compensation for ecological benefits in the case of the public ecological forests.

The reduction of taxes and fees plays a direct and important role in the redistribution of usufruct.

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014)<ref>State Forestry Administration. 2014. General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived Nov. 13, 2018, from http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html.</ref>,

The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (State Forestry Administration, 2014)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=2014|title=The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results|url=|department=The State Forestry Administration|journal=Forest Resource Management|location=Beijing|volume=1|pages=1-2|doi=10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001|issn=1002-6622|via=}}</ref> shows that

==Assessment==
Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used

==Recommendations==
Villagers:

Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches in developing new forms of forestry economy. For those who

Village council:

Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique, etc.

A scheduled timetable for regulated meeting.

Local government:

Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

The Forest Department:

Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

The State Government:

A clear legislation for entitlement of the collective forest rights.

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-24T22:28:11Z

YIXUANYU: /* Further Forestry Development */

Figure1: Timeline of the Collective Forest Tenure reform in Jiewen

Figure2: Stakeholders involved

== '''Description''' ==

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting and marketing timber products and under-forest farming products for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with most places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management in China.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four major changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes were disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on a number of issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of forest is collectively owned and 14% is reserved for state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling a communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are devided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a certain piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4" />.

However, the unified management of collective forests was still continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the community collective income, as a result of which the farmers actually do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department were sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017)<ref name=":0" /> mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide commercial materials was reduced from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>
== '''Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village''' ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017)<ref name=":3">{{Cite news|url=https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707|title=“林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]|last=Li|first=X.|date=2017|work=The Paper|access-date=November 3, 2018}}</ref>, Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform were interviewed. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is an elder villager whose subsistence entirly rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers difficult to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to being at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which 7 were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing

=== A Favourable Turn ===
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

To start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there was no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businessmen. Therefore, FDFP required the village to first average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of “how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests”.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Eventually, the collective forests were divided into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, to make sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, the first new forest certificate was given to Li Guilin, which symbolized the clarification forest ownership and bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
There were totally 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village. Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village council and villagers came with a consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest property rights reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through paid-use system in the condition of unchanged usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy.
# villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or in the future have the property rights. The group of people has no need to pay fees to the village council.
# Villagers are charged by the Village Council if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.
=== '''Further Forestry Development''' ===
Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country<ref name=":0" />. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded.

Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016)<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=Lin|first=C.|date=2016|title=武平县林下经济发展状况研究|trans-title=Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County|url=|journal=现代商贸工业|volume=34|pages=50-51|doi=10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026|via=}}</ref> definated that the under-forest economy is to improve the comprehensive utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below:
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />, the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan.

==Stakeholders Analysis ==

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''villagers who harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in village'''
* '''villagers who develop under-forest planting, under-forest farming and non-timber forest products'''

* '''villagers who develop eco-tourism'''
Before the collective forest tenure reform was recognized by the state government, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people are entitled with the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since the forests in Jiewen are collectively owned, households don't have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

==Discussion==
=== Achievements ===
* Every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests.
* The income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved.
* The financial revenue of the village increased.
* The situation of deforestation was alleviated. The stability of the forest area became much better than before.

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014)<ref>State Forestry Administration. 2014. General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived Nov. 13, 2018, from http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html.</ref>,

The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (State Forestry Administration, 2014)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=2014|title=The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results|url=|department=The State Forestry Administration|journal=Forest Resource Management|location=Beijing|volume=1|pages=1-2|doi=10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001|issn=1002-6622|via=}}</ref> shows that

==Assessment==
Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used

==Recommendations==
Villagers:

Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches in developing new forms of forestry economy. For those who

Village council:

Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique, etc.

A scheduled timetable for regulated meeting.

Local government:

Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

The Forest Department:

Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

The State Government:

A clear legislation for entitlement of the collective forest rights.

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-24T22:27:20Z

YIXUANYU: /* Further Forestry Development */

Figure1: Timeline of the Collective Forest Tenure reform in Jiewen

Figure2: Stakeholders involved

== '''Description''' ==

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting and marketing timber products and under-forest farming products for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with most places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management in China.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four major changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes were disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on a number of issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of forest is collectively owned and 14% is reserved for state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling a communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are devided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a certain piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4" />.

However, the unified management of collective forests was still continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the community collective income, as a result of which the farmers actually do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department were sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017)<ref name=":0" /> mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide commercial materials was reduced from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>
== '''Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village''' ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017)<ref name=":3">{{Cite news|url=https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707|title=“林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]|last=Li|first=X.|date=2017|work=The Paper|access-date=November 3, 2018}}</ref>, Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform were interviewed. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is an elder villager whose subsistence entirly rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers difficult to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to being at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which 7 were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing

=== A Favourable Turn ===
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

To start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there was no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businessmen. Therefore, FDFP required the village to first average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of “how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests”.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Eventually, the collective forests were divided into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, to make sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, the first new forest certificate was given to Li Guilin, which symbolized the clarification forest ownership and bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
There were totally 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village. Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village council and villagers came with a consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest property rights reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through paid-use system in the condition of unchanged usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy.
# villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or in the future have the property rights. The group of people has no need to pay fees to the village council.
# Villagers are charged by the Village Council if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.

==== '''Further Forestry Development''' ====
Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country<ref name=":0" />. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded.

Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016)<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=Lin|first=C.|date=2016|title=武平县林下经济发展状况研究|trans-title=Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County|url=|journal=现代商贸工业|volume=34|pages=50-51|doi=10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026|via=}}</ref> definated that the under-forest economy is to improve the comprehensive utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below:
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />, the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan.

==Stakeholders Analysis ==

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''villagers who harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in village'''
* '''villagers who develop under-forest planting, under-forest farming and non-timber forest products'''

* '''villagers who develop eco-tourism'''
Before the collective forest tenure reform was recognized by the state government, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people are entitled with the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since the forests in Jiewen are collectively owned, households don't have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

==Discussion==
=== Achievements ===
* Every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests.
* The income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved.
* The financial revenue of the village increased.
* The situation of deforestation was alleviated. The stability of the forest area became much better than before.

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014)<ref>State Forestry Administration. 2014. General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived Nov. 13, 2018, from http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html.</ref>,

The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (State Forestry Administration, 2014)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=2014|title=The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results|url=|department=The State Forestry Administration|journal=Forest Resource Management|location=Beijing|volume=1|pages=1-2|doi=10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001|issn=1002-6622|via=}}</ref> shows that

==Assessment==
Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used

==Recommendations==
Villagers:

Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches in developing new forms of forestry economy. For those who

Village council:

Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique, etc.

A scheduled timetable for regulated meeting.

Local government:

Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

The Forest Department:

Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

The State Government:

A clear legislation for entitlement of the collective forest rights.

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-24T22:26:12Z

YIXUANYU: /* Affected Stakeholders */

Figure1: Timeline of the Collective Forest Tenure reform in Jiewen

Figure2: Stakeholders involved

== '''Description''' ==

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting and marketing timber products and under-forest farming products for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with most places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management in China.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four major changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes were disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on a number of issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry. According to the “three-set” forestry, about 85% of forest is collectively owned and 14% is reserved for state, only nearly 1% is owned by freeholders or with unclear ownership. The State Forest Administration (SFA) issued the forest certificate to owners. Family hills (so-called ''Ziliu Shan'') were assigned to households from the collective forests, entitling a communal ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land. Forestry management responsibility was established. The collective forests are devided to householders for management and protection. Each householder is responsible for a certain piece of forest area (so-called ''Zeren Shan'')''.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Lu et al., 2002)<ref name=":4" />.

However, the unified management of collective forests was still continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the community collective income, as a result of which the farmers actually do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department were sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017)<ref name=":0" /> mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide commercial materials was reduced from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in southern China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct of all kinds of collective forests, as well as establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>
== '''Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village''' ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
In the report by Li X. (2017)<ref name=":3">{{Cite news|url=https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707|title=“林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]|last=Li|first=X.|date=2017|work=The Paper|access-date=November 3, 2018}}</ref>, Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform were interviewed. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is an elder villager whose subsistence entirly rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers difficult to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to being at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which 7 were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing

=== A Favourable Turn ===
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

To start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there was no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businessmen. Therefore, FDFP required the village to first average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of “how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests”.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Eventually, the collective forests were divided into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, to make sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, the first new forest certificate was given to Li Guilin, which symbolized the clarification forest ownership and bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
There were totally 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village. Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village council and villagers came with a consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest property rights reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through paid-use system in the condition of unchanged usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy.
# villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or in the future have the property rights. The group of people has no need to pay fees to the village council.
# Villagers are charged by the Village Council if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village.
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute through the old forest certificate will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.

=== '''Further Forestry Development''' ===
Experiencing the successful testing in Jiewen Village, without superior authorization, legal basis and enough experience, the government of Wuping County enacted the policies of deepening the reform of the collective forest tenure and the forest property system in 2002. Soon after, the provincial premier who went to Wuping for a site visit was impressed by the management achievements. He permitted and encouraged the new form of the collective forest tenure. In 2003, the whole Fujian province got involved in the reform. Eventually, in 2006, Jiewen's forestry development mode was recognized by the state government. Legislation system was promulgated in the range of the country<ref name=":0" />. The further collective forest tenure reform gradually unfolded.

Under-forest economy acted as an essential part of the further forestry development in Wuping. C. Lin (2016)<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=Lin|first=C.|date=2016|title=武平县林下经济发展状况研究|trans-title=Study on the development of under-forest economy in Wuping County|url=|journal=现代商贸工业|volume=34|pages=50-51|doi=10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2016.34.026|via=}}</ref> definated that the under-forest economy is to improve the comprehensive utilization efficiency of forest land and resources under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development. It includes various pathways such as under-forest planting, under-forest farming, forest-related products collection and processing, and forest landscape utilization. It is an ecological economic development model that aims at achieving a win-win situation for socio-economic development and forest resources conservation.

Four types of the under-forest economy below:
* Under-forest planting
# Domesticated wild vegetations
# Bionics wild cultivation
# Interplanting oil-bearing crops and precious tree seedlings
* Under-forest farming
# Free-ranging livestock
# Beekeeping
# Frog breeding
* Non-timber forest products
# Dried bamboo shoots
# Pine resin
# Mushroom
* Eco-tourism
According to the statistics of 2013 (Lin, 2016)<ref name=":5" />, the Wuping county's under-forest economic management area reached 2,455,531 mu. 7200 households and 65 professional cooperatives engaged in the forest economy. The number of forest economy employees was 13,007, and the total output value was 13.68 billion yuan.

==Stakeholders Analysis ==

=== Affected Stakeholders ===
* '''villagers who harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in village'''
* '''villagers who develop under-forest planting, under-forest farming and non-timber forest products'''

* '''villagers who develop eco-tourism'''
Before the collective forest tenure reform was recognized by the state government, those villagers had customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies recognized by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people are entitled with the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since the forests in Jiewen are collectively owned, households don't have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.

=== Interested Outside Stakeholders ===
* '''Village Chief'''
* '''Village Council'''
* '''Foresters'''
* '''Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''State Council'''

==Discussion==
=== Achievements ===
* Every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests.
* The income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved.
* The financial revenue of the village increased.
* The situation of deforestation was alleviated. The stability of the forest area became much better than before.

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014)<ref>State Forestry Administration. 2014. General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived Nov. 13, 2018, from http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html.</ref>,

The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (State Forestry Administration, 2014)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=2014|title=The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results|url=|department=The State Forestry Administration|journal=Forest Resource Management|location=Beijing|volume=1|pages=1-2|doi=10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001|issn=1002-6622|via=}}</ref> shows that

==Assessment==
Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used

==Recommendations==
Villagers:

Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches in developing new forms of forestry economy. For those who

Village council:

Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique, etc.

A scheduled timetable for regulated meeting.

Local government:

Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

The Forest Department:

Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

The State Government:

A clear legislation for entitlement of the collective forest rights.

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-24T07:41:41Z

YIXUANYU: /* Affected Stakeholders */

Add your summary here

== '''Description''' ==

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting and marketing timber products and under-forest farming products for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with most places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management in China.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four major changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes were disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on a number of issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry, which including delineating the ownership of the mountain, stabilizing the forest right, and determining the responsibility system for forestry production. According to the “three-set” forestry, 85% of forest tenure is collectively owned and 15% is reserved for freeholders. The policy determined that the village councils allocate family hills (''Ziliu Shan'') to households of the collectives, entitling a household ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land (Xie ''et al''., 2017)<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>. The collective forests are assigned to householders for management and protection. Each householder has its responsible forest area, which so-called ''Zeren Shan.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Xie ''et al''., 2017)<ref name=":2" />.

However, the unified management of collective forests was still continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the community collective income, as a result of which the farmers actually do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department were sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017)<ref name=":0" /> mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide commercial materials was reduced from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in south China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct rights of all kinds of collective forests, as well as establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)<ref name=":2" />
== '''Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village''' ==

=== A Prevalence of Illegal Wood Cutting ===
From the report by Li X. (2017)<ref name=":3">{{Cite news|url=https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707|title=“林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]|last=Li|first=X.|date=2017|work=The Paper|access-date=November 3, 2018}}</ref>, Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform were interviewed. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is an elder villager whose subsistence entirly rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers difficult to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to being at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which 7 were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing

=== A Favourable Turn ===
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

To start the reform, the village had to carve a path. However, there was no lessons could be drawn from the past. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forestland according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by outside businessmen. Therefore, FDFP required the village to first average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of “how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests”.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Eventually, the collective forests were divided into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, to make sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, the first new forest certificate was given to Li Guilin, which symbolized the clarification forest ownership and bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in our country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
There were totally 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village. Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village council and villagers came with a consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest property rights reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through paid-use system in the condition of unchanged usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy.
# villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or in the future have the property rights. The group of people has no need to pay fees to the village council.
# Villagers are charged by the Village Council if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village .
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power
* '''villagers who develop under-forest planting, under-forest farming and non-timber forest products'''
* '''villagers who harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in village'''

* '''villagers who develop eco-tourism'''
Before the collective forest tenure reform was recognized by the state government, those villagers have customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies acknowledged by the State Council and the Central Committee of the CPC, those group of people are entitled with the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since the forests in Jiewen are collective owned, households don't have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

* '''the Village Chief'''
* '''the Village Council'''
* '''foresters'''
* '''the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''the City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''the Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''the State Council'''

==Discussion==
=== Achievements ===
# Every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests.
# The income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved.
# The financial revenue of the village increased.
# The situation of deforestation was alleviated. The stability of the forest area became much better than before.

=== Deficiencies ===
According to the General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China (2014)<ref>State Forestry Administration. 2014. General Situation of Forest Resource Management in China, pp. 3-4. Retreived Nov. 13, 2018, from http://211.167.243.162:8085/8/book/jiankuang/index.html.</ref>,

The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results (State Forestry Administration, 2014)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=2014|title=The Eighth National Forest Resource Inventory Results|url=|department=The State Forestry Administration|journal=Forest Resource Management|location=Beijing|volume=1|pages=1-2|doi=10.13466/j.cnki.lyzygl.2014.01.001|issn=1002-6622|via=}}</ref> shows that

==Assessment==
Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used

==Recommendations==
Villagers:

Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches in developing new forms of forestry economy. For those who

Village council:

Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique, etc.

A scheduled timetable for regulated meeting.

Local government:

Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

The Forest Department:

Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

The State Government:

A clear legislation for entitlement of the collective forest rights.

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-23T23:10:25Z

YIXUANYU: /* Introduction */

Add your summary here

== '''Description''' ==

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting and marketing timber products and under-forest farming products for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with most places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management in China.

=== Background -The Collective Forest Tenure in China ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four major changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes were disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on a number of issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry, which including delineating the ownership of the mountain, stabilizing the forest right, and determining the responsibility system for forestry production. According to the “three-set” forestry, 85% of forest tenure is collectively owned and 15% is reserved for freeholders. The policy determined that the village councils allocate family hills (''Ziliu Shan'') to households of the collectives, entitling a household ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land (Xie ''et al''., 2017)<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>. The collective forests are assigned to householders for management and protection. Each householder has its responsible forest area, which so-called ''Zeren Shan.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Xie ''et al''., 2017)<ref name=":2" />.

However, the unified management of collective forests was still continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the community collective income, as a result of which the farmers actually do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department were sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017)<ref name=":0" /> mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide commercial materials was reduced from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in south China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct rights of all kinds of collective forests, as well as establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)<ref name=":2" />
== '''Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen Village''' ==
From the report by Li X. (2017)<ref name=":3">{{Cite news|url=https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1724707|title=“林改第一村”是如何破除五难的 [How did the Jiewen Village solve the five difficulties?]|last=Li|first=X.|date=2017|work=The Paper|access-date=November 3, 2018}}</ref>, Jiewen's people who experienced the collective forest tenure reform were interviewed. Li Yongxing used to be the Village Chief of Jiewen who lead the Village Council to promote the reform. Li Guilin is an elder villager whose subsistence entirly rely on the collective forests.
* “At that time (before the collective forest tenure reform), the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct rights or management rights. Villagers didn’t have those rights.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Lack of the property rights but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In 1990s, if a family in village urgently needed cash income, the family members ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers difficult to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to being at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which 7 were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they enforced an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which was not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

To start the reform, the village faced many challenges. There was no lessons can be drawn from the past. Li Yongxing decided to re-allocated the collective forests first. The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forest land according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by businessmen. Therefore, FDFP required the village to first average the forestland and permitted the Wuping government to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In this case, the village council organized a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of “how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests”.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Yongxing
Eventually, the collective forests were divided into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, to make sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, the first new forest certificate was given to Li Guilin, which symbolized the clarification forest ownership and bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in the country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.”<ref name=":3" /> – Li Guilin
There were totally 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village. Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village council and villagers came with a consistency and developed an implementation plan for deepening the collective forest property rights reform in Jiewen Village. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through paid-use system in the condition of unchanged usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives.

More specifically, there are four main strategies of the policy.
# villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or in the future have the property rights. The group of people has no need to pay fees to the village council.
# Villagers are charged by the Village Council if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in village. The charged fees depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village .
# For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract.
# Forests in dispute will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power
* '''villagers who develop under-forest planting, under-forest farming and non-timber forest products'''
* '''villagers who harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests in village -''' Before the collective forest tenure reform was recognized by the state government, they have customary property rights on the collective forests in Jiewen. With the policies acknowledged by the State Council, those group of people are entitled the statuary property rights on their forestland. Since the forests in Jiewen are collective owned, households don't have private properties but communal property rights of the forests assigned to them.

* '''villagers who develop eco-tourism'''

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

* '''the Village Chief'''
* '''the Village Council'''
* '''foresters'''
* '''the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC)'''
* '''the City Council of Longyan (CCL)'''
* '''the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL)'''
* '''the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP)'''
* '''the Central Committee of the CPC'''
* '''the State Council'''

==Discussion==
A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed

==Assessment==
Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used

=== Achievements ===
# Every householder has its forest allocated from the collective forests.
# The income of villagers and the positivity for managing the forest are improved.
# The financial revenue of the village increased.
# The situation of deforestation was alleviated. The stability of the forest area became much better than before.

==Recommendations==
Villagers:

Explore pathways for higher income and better livelihoods through the collective forest management. For those who rely on the under-forest planting, under-forest farming and non-timber forest products, they can try to create various approaches in developing new forms of forestry economy. For those who

Village council:

Host some education activity for villagers to let them have a better knowledge about the forest, ecosystem, and under-forest farming technique, etc.

A scheduled timetable for regulated meeting.

Local government:

Offer appropriation and loans for villagers and communities to develop forest economy.

The Forest Department:

Encourage different organizations like NGOs to involve in the collective forest management and the sustainable forest management.

The State Government:

A clear legislation for entitlement of the collective forest rights.

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-22T22:33:05Z

YIXUANYU: /* Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen */

Add your summary here

== Introduction ==

Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting and marketing timber products and under-forest farming products for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with most places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management in China.

==The Collective Forest Tenure in China==
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four major changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes were disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on a number of issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry, which including delineating the ownership of the mountain, stabilizing the forest right, and determining the responsibility system for forestry production. According to the “three-set” forestry, 85% of forest tenure is collectively owned and 15% is reserved for freeholders. The policy determined that the village councils allocate family hills (''Ziliu Shan'') to households of the collectives, entitling a household ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land (Xie ''et al''., 2017)<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>. The collective forests are assigned to householders for management and protection. Each householder has its responsible forest area, which so-called ''Zeren Shan.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Xie ''et al''., 2017)<ref name=":2" />.

However, the unified management of collective forests was still continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the community collective income, as a result of which the farmers actually do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department were sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017)<ref name=":0" /> mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide commercial materials was reduced from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in south China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct rights of all kinds of collective forests, as well as establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)<ref name=":2" />
== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen ==
* “At that time, the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct rights or management rights. We didn’t have those rights.” – Li Yongxing, the cheif of the Village Council in Jiewen
Lack of the property right but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. In 1990s, if the family urgently needed cash income, farmers ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers difficult to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to being at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.” – Li Guilin, a villager in Jiewen
In 1993, the forest police in the Forestry Department of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which 7 were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.” – Li Yongxing
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they promulgated an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which were not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forest land according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by businessmen. Therefore, FDFP required the village to first average the forest land and permitted Wuping to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. The village council held a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of “how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests”.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.” – Li Yongxing
Eventually, the collective forests were divided into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, to make sure that households were allocated the collective forests fairly. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, the first new forest certificate was given to Li Guilin, which symbolized the clarification forest ownership and bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in the country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.” – Li Guilin
There were totally 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village. Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village council and villagers came with a consistency and developed a policy for the collective forest tenure reform mode. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through paid-use system in the condition of unchanged usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives. More specifically, villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own-grown forestland in the past or in the future have the property rights. The group of people has no need to pay fees to the village council. Villagers are charged by the village council if they harvest timber directly from the collective-grown forests and natural forests. The prices depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village. For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract. Forests in dispute will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

==Discussion==
A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed

==Assessment==
Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used

==Recommendations==
Your recommendations about this community forestry project

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-22T21:02:24Z

YIXUANYU: /* Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen */

Add your summary here

== Introduction ==

Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting and marketing timber products and under-forest farming products for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with most places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management in China.

==The Collective Forest Tenure in China==
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four major changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes were disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on a number of issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry, which including delineating the ownership of the mountain, stabilizing the forest right, and determining the responsibility system for forestry production. According to the “three-set” forestry, 85% of forest tenure is collectively owned and 15% is reserved for freeholders. The policy determined that the village councils allocate family hills (''Ziliu Shan'') to households of the collectives, entitling a household ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land (Xie ''et al''., 2017)<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>. The collective forests are assigned to householders for management and protection. Each householder has its responsible forest area, which so-called ''Zeren Shan.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Xie ''et al''., 2017)<ref name=":2" />.

However, the unified management of collective forests was still continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the community collective income, as a result of which the farmers actually do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department were sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017)<ref name=":0" /> mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide commercial materials was reduced from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in south China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct rights of all kinds of collective forests, as well as establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)<ref name=":2" />
== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen ==
* “At that time, the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct rights or management rights. We didn’t have those rights.” – Li Yongxing, the cheif of the Village Council in Jiewen
Lack of the usufruct right but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. When the family urgently needed cash income, farmers ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers difficult to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to being at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.” – Li Guilin, a villager in Jiewen
In 1993, the forest police in the Forest Departement of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which 7 were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.” – Li Yongxing
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they promulgated an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which were not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forest land according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by businessmen. Therefore, FDFP required the village to first average the forest land and permitted Wuping to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. The village council held a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of “how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests”.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.” – Li Yongxing
Eventually, the collective forests were divided into each householder. The technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for implementation of the forest inventory and demarcating the forestlands in fields, to make sure that households were allocated the collective forests farily. Following that, the Village Council published the situation of the registration of the new forest certificates for a month. In December 2001, the first new forest certificate was given to Li Guilin, which symbolized the clarification forest ownership and bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in the country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.” – Li Guilin
There were totally 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village. Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland. In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village council and villagers came with a consistency and developed a policy for the collective forest tenure reform mode. In the document, the forests in Jiewen village is collectively owned. Villages are allowed to use the forests through paid-use system in the condition of unchanged usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives. More specificlly, villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own growed forestland in the past or in the future have the property rights. The group of people has no need to pay fees to the village council. Villagers are charged by the village council if they harvest timber directly from the collective-growed forests and natural forests. The prices depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village. For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract. Forests in dispute will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

==Discussion==
A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed

==Assessment==
Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used

==Recommendations==
Your recommendations about this community forestry project

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-22T20:46:08Z

YIXUANYU:

Add your summary here

== Introduction ==

Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting and marketing timber products and under-forest farming products for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with most places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management in China.

==The Collective Forest Tenure in China==
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four major changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes were disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on a number of issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry, which including delineating the ownership of the mountain, stabilizing the forest right, and determining the responsibility system for forestry production. According to the “three-set” forestry, 85% of forest tenure is collectively owned and 15% is reserved for freeholders. The policy determined that the village councils allocate family hills (''Ziliu Shan'') to households of the collectives, entitling a household ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land (Xie ''et al''., 2017)<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>. The collective forests are assigned to householders for management and protection. Each householder has its responsible forest area, which so-called ''Zeren Shan.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Xie ''et al''., 2017)<ref name=":2" />.

However, the unified management of collective forests was still continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the community collective income, as a result of which the farmers actually do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department were sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to foresters working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017)<ref name=":0" /> mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide commercial materials was reduced from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in south China forests.

The new market mechanisms enacted in 1990s by the state government, in which people were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct rights of all kinds of collective forests, as well as establishment of forest cooperatives. However, “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)<ref name=":2" />
== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen ==
* “At that time, the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct rights or management rights. We didn’t have those rights.” – Li Yongxing, the cheif of the Village Council in Jiewen
Lack of the usufruct right but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. When the family urgently needed cash income, farmers ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers difficult to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to being at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.” – Li Guilin, a villager in Jiewen
In 1993, the forest police in the Forest Departement of Wuping County (FDWC) went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which 7 were sentenced.
* “Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.” – Li Yongxing
In 1999, the City Council of Longyan (CCL) and the Forestry Department of Longyan (FDL) decided to deepen the market mechanisms reform in forestry system. To promote the plan, they promulgated an official document to reform the forest tenure system and forest rights, which were not acknowledged by the state government at that time. Jiewen Village, of Li Yongxing, the village chief's own accord, became the first testing unit for the collective forest tenure reform in Longyan.

The CCL used to propose a plan to re-allocate the forest land according to the villagers' bidding. While the Forestry Department of Fujian Provincial (FDFP) worried that the plan could incur issues that intervened by businessmen. Therefore, FDFP required the village to first average the forest land. The village council held a villagers' meeting for discussing the question of “how to divide the forests and who are going to divide the forests”.
* “At that time, 80% of the villagers agreed that the collective forests should be distributed to each household on average. So we decided to do it.” – Li Yongxing
Eventually, the collective forests were divided into each householder. And the technician from the FDWC and FDL, the villagers and the village chiefs went together and collaborated for demarcating the forestlands in fields, to make sure that households were allocated the collective forests farily. The FDFP permitted Wuping to develop new forest certificate authorizing forest rights in Jiewen. In December 2001, the first new forest certificate was given to Li Guilin, which symbolized the clarification forest ownership and bundle of rights including management rights, disposal rights, and usufruct.
* “On December 30, 2001, I got the first new forest certificate in the country. The village had a certificate issuing ceremony. When my name was reported, I was so excited. I am the real owner of the forests. I owned 259 acres of the forestland.” – Li Guilin
There were totally 352 certificates involving 26763 mu forestlands distributed into households in Jiewen village. Every householder has its forest rights of a piece of forestland.

In 2002, with the support by the FDFP, the CCL and the FDWC, the Village council and villagers came with a consistency and developed a policy for the collective forest tenure reform mode. The forests in Jiewen village was collectively owned. Villagers are allowed to use the forests through paid-use system in the condition of unchanged usage of the land. The time for renting forests is fifty years. Based on the management system, households who are responsible for the allocated forest have forest rights according to the new forest certificate. The rights should be acknowledged by households or cooperatives. More specificlly, villagers who harvest non-timber forest products from their own growed forestland in the past or in the future have the property rights. The group of people has no need to pay fees to the village council. Villagers are charged by the village council if they harvest timber directly from the collective-growed forests and natural forests. The prices depend on the quality of the forest. The money will contribute to the financial revenue of the village. For those forests that have already been contracted, the contractor doesn’t need to pay fees again before expiration of the contract. Forests in dispute will be mediated by the village council first. Then claimant can refer the case to court if they are dissatisfied with the result.

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

==Discussion==
A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed

==Assessment==
Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used

==Recommendations==
Your recommendations about this community forestry project

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-22T00:48:24Z

YIXUANYU:

Add your summary here

== Introduction ==

Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wan'an Town, Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>. Jiewen is a typical village relying on forestry and agriculture. It has the most sparse population but richest forest resources in Wan'an Township, with 26,763 acres of forests and 46.2 acres per capita (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref name=":1" />. Timber and non-timber forest products are vital sources for villagers to maintain their livelihood.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting and marketing timber products and under-forest farming products for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with most places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management in China.

==The Collective Forest Tenure in China==
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four major changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes were disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on a number of issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry, which including delineating the ownership of the mountain, stabilizing the forest right, and determining the responsibility system for forestry production. According to the “three-set” forestry, 85% of forest tenure is collectively owned and 15% is reserved for freeholders. The policy determined that the village councils allocate family hills (''Ziliu Shan'') to households of the collectives, entiting a household ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land (Xie ''et al''., 2017)<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>. The collective forests are assigned to householders for management and protection. Each householder has its responsible forest area, which so-called ''Zeren Shan.'' By 1986, nearly 70% of the collective forestlands in the eight southern provinces had been transferred to household management (Xie ''et al''., 2017)<ref name=":2" />.

However, The unified management of collective forests was still continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the village, then the village council organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the community collective income, as a result of which the farmers actually do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department were sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to forestors working for the local forestry department.

By the mid-1980s, as Zhao (2017)<ref name=":0" /> mentioned in his report, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide commercial materials was reduced from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />. In 1987, the government stopped the allocation of forestland of the collective forests since the timber harvest of individual households led to the severe deforestation in south China forests.

Xie et al (2017)<ref name=":2" /> display that the new market mechanisms enacted in 1990s. People were allowed to transfer long-term usufruct rights of all kinds of collective forests, as well as establishment of forest cooperatives. “Despite the increase in the scale of forestry operation, the productivity of collective forests decreased in the 1990s compared to state owned forests, mainly because the heavy tax burden and difficulties in obtaining harvest permits decreased farmers’ incentives to invest in forestry.” (Xie et al., 2017)<ref name=":2" />

== Village and State Collective Forest Management in Jiewen ==
When the
* “At that time, the forests were owned by the village collectively. Villagers only assumed the responsibility of management and protection. After the application for harvest was approved by the local forest department, the villagers could enter the forests. However, that cannot be called as usufruct rights or management rights. We didn’t have those rights.”
– Li Yongxing, the cheif of the Village Council in Jiewen

Lack of the usufruct right but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. When the family urgently needed cash income, farmers ran into the collective forest to cut a few trees. The reality of low income by the harvest makes the villagers difficult to survive and maintain their livelihoods. A prevalence of stealing the wood to earn money came to being at that time. One of the main tasks of the village chiefs at that time was to watch around the forests and set up barriers to prevent deforestation.
* “Villagers felt that the forest is not owned by themselves anyway. Trees were cut down during the day and were transported at night. Finally, people sold those wood secretly. They could easily earn over a hundred yuan in this way while only seven yuan by harvesting timber products valued about forty-yuan.”
– Li Guilin, a villager in Jiewen

In 1993, the forest police in the Wuping County Forest Public Security Bureau went to Jiewen Village to investigate and detain the villagers for deforestation. Ten people were arrested at the time, of which 7 were sentenced.

“Since then, the male villagers basically hid away when they saw the forest police, remaining the female villagers.”

– Li Yongxing

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

==Discussion==
A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed

==Assessment==
Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used

==Recommendations==
Your recommendations about this community forestry project

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-21T04:41:31Z

YIXUANYU: /* Village and State Forest Management in Jiewen */

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-21T04:00:56Z

YIXUANYU:

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-21T03:59:32Z

YIXUANYU:

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-20T22:23:55Z

YIXUANYU:

Add your summary here

==Description==

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%8D%B7%E6%96%87%E6%9D%91|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=October 22, 2018}}</ref>.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting and marketing timber products and under-forest farming products for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with most places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management in China.

=== Background ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four major changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Zhao|first=Peng|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>. At that time, "the people" controlled by the state government and Communist Party of China (CPC) owned all the forest resources.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime (Lu et al., 2002)<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Getting%20the%20Private%20Sector%20to%20Work%20for%20the%20Public%20Good%E2%80%94Instruments%20for%20Sustainable%20Private%20Sector%20Forestry%20in%20China&author=W.%20Lu&publication_year=2002|title=Getting the private sector to work for the public good: instruments for sustainable private sector forestry in China.|last=Lu|first=W.|last2=Landell-Mills|first2=N.|last3=Liu|first3=J.|last4=Xu|first4=J.|last5=Liu|first5=C.|publisher=International Institute for Environment and Development|year=2002|isbn=|location=London|pages=}}</ref>, People’s Communes were disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council. In the "Decisions on a number of issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry, which including delineating the ownership of the mountain, stabilizing the forest right, and determining the responsibility system for forestry production. According to the “three-set” forestry, 85% of forest tenure is collectively owned and 15% is reserved for freeholders. The policy determined to allocate family hills (''Ziliu Shan'') to households of the collectives, entiting a household ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land (Xie ''et al''., 2017)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>. The collective forests are assigned to householders for management and protection. Each householder has its responsible forest area, which so-called ''Zeren Shan.'' However, The unified management of collective forests was still continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the community, then the community organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the community collective income, as a result of which the farmers actually do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department were sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to forestors working for the local forestry department (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0" />.

Lack of the usufruct right but the heavy load for responsibility led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forest management. By the mid-1980s, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100<ref name=":0" />. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide commercial materials was reduced from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory<ref name=":0" />.

==Tenure arrangements==
Tenure arrangements. Describe the nature of the tenure: freehold or forest management agreement/arrangements, duration, etc.

==Administrative arrangements==
Administrative arrangements. Describe the management authority and the reporting system.

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

==Discussion==
A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed

==Assessment==
Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used

==Recommendations==
Your recommendations about this community forestry project

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-20T20:02:52Z

YIXUANYU:

Add your summary here

==Description==

=== Introduction ===
Jiewen Village is under the jurisdiction of Wuping County, Longyan City. It is located at the southwestern part of Fujian Province, more than 10 kilometers away from the county town (“Jiewencun”, 2018)<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://baike.baidu.com/item.|title=Jiewencun|last=|first=|date=October 22, 2018.|website=Baikebaidu|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=}}</ref>.

Jiewen is a pioneer for the collective forest tenure reform and community-based forest management in China. Since 2001, Jiewen has developed and enforced their new collective forest tenure system, harvesting and marketing timber products and under-forest farming products for better livelihoods. Through the collective forest tenure reform, Jiewen community redistribute and allocate the collective forests and clarify forest right for villagers. Compared with most places in China, the maturity of the management system of this village has a profound meaning for providing a demonstration for the future development in community-based forest management in China.

=== Background ===
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the collective forest tenure system experienced four major changes (Zhao, 2017)<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0710/c1001-29392889.html.|title=武平林改十五年（人民眼·林权改革）[The fifteen-year forest tenure reform in Wuping County].|last=Peng|first=Zhao|date=July 10, 2017|work=Xinhua News Agency|access-date=October 28, 2018}}</ref>. In the beginning, forestland was divided into freehold forests during the land resource reform period in the 1950s. Then forests were turned into collective-owned in the agricultural collectivization period for the following twenty years, leading to the unified forest management by People's Communes (Menzies, 2007)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Our forest, your ecosystem, their timber: communities, conservation, and the state in community-based forest management.|last=Menzies|first=N. K.|publisher=Columbia University Press.|year=2007|isbn=|location=New York|pages=18-20}}</ref>.

Due to the defects and inefficiency of this management regime, People’s Communes were disbanded and an official start of collective forest tenure reform started in 1981 by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council. In the "Decisions on a number of issues concerning forest protection and forestry development" (CPC central committee, 1981)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.pkulaw.cn/fulltext_form.aspx?Db=chl&Gid=b71bc8c543e318d6bdfb&keyword=%E3%80%8A%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6%A3%AE%E6%9E%97%E5%8F%91%E5%B1%95%E6%9E%97%E4%B8%9A%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E5%AE%9A%E3%80%8B&EncodingName=&Search_Mode=accurate&Search_IsTitle=0|title=关于保护森林发展林业若干问题的决定[Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Protection of Forest and Development of Forestry]|last=|first=|date=March 8, 1981|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=November 20, 2018}}</ref>, the government introduced “three-set” forestry, which including delineating the ownership of the mountain, stabilizing the forest right, and determining the responsibility system for forestry production. According to the “three-set” forestry, 85% of forest tenure is collectively owned and 15% is reserved for freeholders. The policy determined to allocate family hills (''Ziliu Shan'') to households of the collectives, entiting a household ownership of the trees and permanent use rights of the land<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Xie|first=Yi|last2=Gong|first2=Peichen|last3=Han|first3=Xiao|last4=Wen|first4=Yali|date=2017|title=The effect of collective forestland tenure reform in China: Does land parcelization reduce forest management intensity?|url=|journal=Journal of Forest Economics|publisher=|volume=20|issue=2|pages=126-140|doi=10.1016/j.jfe.2014.03.001|via=}}</ref>. The collective forests are assigned to householders for management and protection. Each householder has its responsible forest area, which so-called ''Zeren Shan.'' However, The unified management of collective forests was still continued. The planned economy approach was adopted in the collective forest market. That is to say, timber products were purchased and sold by the local forestry department. The local forestry department set a price to purchase from the community, then the community organized people to harvest. The regulated price, however, contains a part of the community collective income, as a result of which the farmers actually do not have much income from the harvest. On the other hand, the timber purchased by the local forestry department were sold to the market based on the market price. The process of price making caused the “price scissors”, which was a vital source of county revenue and were used to pay the salary to forestors working for the local forestry department.

Lack of income rights but the responsibility of management led to the community members’ unwillingness to cooperate for the collective forests. By the mid-1980s, the number of counties that are rich in collective forest inventory of over 3 million cubic meters reduced from 158 in the 1950s to less than 100<ref name=":0" />. Meanwhile, the number of counties that could provide commercial materials was reduced from 297 to 172. The third national forest resource inventory shows that the total stock of standing timber in the southern collective forest area decreased by more than 180 million cubic meters compared with the second inventory<ref name=":0" />.

==Tenure arrangements==
Tenure arrangements. Describe the nature of the tenure: freehold or forest management agreement/arrangements, duration, etc.

==Administrative arrangements==
Administrative arrangements. Describe the management authority and the reporting system.

==Affected Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are affected stakeholders, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

==Interested Outside Stakeholders==
Social actors (stakeholders, user groups) who are interested stakeholders, outside the community, their main relevant objectives, and their relative power

==Discussion==
A discussion of the aims and intentions of the community forestry project and your assessment of relative successes or failures. You should also include a discussion of critical issues or conflicts in this community and how they are being managed

==Assessment==
Your assessment of the relative power of each group of social actors, and how that power is being used

==Recommendations==
Your recommendations about this community forestry project

==References==
<references/>

{{Projectbox FRST370
|names=
|share=
}}

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-20T19:09:58Z

YIXUANYU:

Course:FRST370/Projects/Community-based forest management: the collective forest tenure reform in Jiewen village, Fujian province, China

2018-11-20T16:43:04Z

YIXUANYU: