Abstract
China’s central government has carried out a series of collectivization and de-collectivization attempts of forest tenure over time, which have led to multiple forest tenure arrangements within provinces. This paper investigates the motivation of farmers to maintain forestry under various forest tenure regimes. First, the paper provides a qualitative analysis of the different forest tenure regimes using the New Property Rights Theory. Second, an econometric analysis based on data from camellia projects in Jiangxi province is carried out. Camellia projects are long-term projects for the production of non-timber forest products which are important for rural income generation. Qualitative results of the research show that a multitude of different tenure regimes exist across forestry projects. Community-based or collective forest management regimes are the most important tenure regimes in forest management in Jiangxi province. Village communities and farmers are the main actors in forest resource management and investment in camellia projects in Jiangxi province. The results of the econometric analysis show that higher degrees of tenure security and residual claimancy for farm households lead to a higher use of household labor and capital within camellia forestry projects. Uncertainty about the future forestland distribution is an obstacle for household investments in forestry.
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Notes
1 mu = 1/15 hectare.
Natural village is a sub-unit of an administrative village.
Note that the Collective regime is not included in the analysis because survey households had little involvement in forestry management under this regime and are hence not familiar with the situation.
Note that the continuation of a (contractual) relationship can be related to the assurance perspective of tenure security. This is, however, distinctly different from the perception of long-term tenure security as captured by the variable TS (tenure insecurity).
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Acknowledgments
This research was carried out within the research SURE project (Sustainable Natural REsource Use in Rural China, http://sure.ernasia.org/), which is funded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), grant 08-PSA-E-02, and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST), Grant 2008DFA90630, as part of the Programme Strategic Scientific Alliances.
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Li, J., Bluemling, B. & Dries, L. Property Rights Effects on Farmers’ Management Investment in Forestry Projects: The Case of Camellia in Jiangxi, China. Small-scale Forestry 15, 271–289 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-016-9322-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-016-9322-5