Impacts of Policy Measures on the Development of State-Owned Forests in Northeastern China: Theoretical Results and Empirical Evidence

State-owned forest enterprises (SOFEs) in northeast China and Inner Mongolia play important roles both in timber production and in the maintenance of ecological security. However, since the late 1970s, forest resource and economic crises have seriously restricted these functions.

Based on a theoretical and an empirical analysis of the harvest and investment behavior of the SOFEs, we examined the effects of forest policies and the socioeconomic conditions on the behavioral choices of the SOFEs. Both the extent to which SOFE supervising authorities emphasized improvement of forest resources in their annual evaluations and the increases in expenses necessary to manage SOFEs had significant impacts on harvest and investment decisions as well as development of forest resources. Promoting the management and utilization of non-timber resources, as well as reforms to increase the efficiency of forest protection and management, have reduced timber harvests as intended, which in turn has increased investment and improved forest resources. The effects have been relatively small, however. In contrast, reforms aimed at timber harvest and afforestation activities actually contributed to increasing the timber harvest, which affected the development of the forest resources negatively.

EfD Authors

Dr. Xuemei Jiang Domestic Associate
Professor Jintao Xu Coordinator and Research Fellow

Keywords

Files

Link to pdf 623.1 kB

Centers

china

Type of publication

EfD Discussion paper

Reference

Jiang Xuemei, Gong Peichen, Bostedt Göran, and Xu Jintao, 2011, “Impacts of Policy Measures on the Development of State-Owned Forests in Northeastern China: Theoretical Results and Empirical Evidence”. Environment for Development Discussion Paper Series, EfD DP 11-12.

Environment for Development

Environment for Development