Evaluation Of Policy Factors Affecting Heilongjiang Province’s Local Forestry Sustainable Development

This paper described the basic theory of sustainable development, overviewed Heilongjiang province’s local forestry (hereinafter referred to as "local forestry") and introduced the favorable factors and constraints affecting its sustainable development. My research was first time proposed and constructed evaluation index system for local sustainable development, based on sustainable development theory and previous researches. The index system is divided into four hierarchy structures:The 1st hierarchy is regional wide target, namely local forestry sustainable development index; the 2nd hierarchy is sector level indicators, including forest resource, economic development, social wellbeing, and science and technology advancement; the 3rd is system level indicators, including 15 indicators (see text for details) and the last is operational level indicators (46 indicators). The overall methodology was based on export knowledge system and analytic hierarchy process to determine the sustainable development index of each year for the local forestry from 2008 to 2013. In short, First, I reviewed each level indicators by consulting published criterion and indicators or literature or local expert knowledge, and summarized their reference values. Second, I normalized the observations by using the reference values as a standard mean to scale the observations into 0 to 100, with the higher the value, the more important the indicator. And lastly, the hierarchical weights were applied to each individual indicator to be summarized as regional sustainable development index, ranging from 0 to 100. Three classes were defined for evaluating the development status:1.Strong development status, with index score ranges in (80.100); 2.Weak development status, with index score ranges in (60,80); and 3. Unsustainable development status, with index score ranges in (0,60). Furthermore, I also conducted barrier factors diagnostic analysis to assess the major obstacles during sustainable development, nevertheless, the analysis also called obstacle factor analysis, which can tell us which indicators are major barriers and how much it contributes to obstacle the sustainable development in an independent scaled scale.The results showed that the local forestry sustainable development index from 2008 to 2013 was 71.1452,70.7199,69.1785,75.0238,74.8226 and 74.1339 respectively. Thus, the local forestry was in the status of sustainable development, and located in the weak development stage. Furthermore, The obstacle factor analyses demonstrated that soil conservation rates, unit forest stand growth rate and research investment ratio were three major development barriers for local forestry development. The three indictors accounted for about 41.78% of total obstacles, in that, soil and water conservation rates accounted for about 23.82%. the unit forest stand growth rate accounted for about 11.68%. while research investment ratio accounted for another 6.28%. Thus, How to improve soil and water conservation rate and unit forest stand growth rate are keys to advance local forestry sustainability development.In addition, I also applied the methodology developed in my research to assess the new national and provincial legislation impacts on local forestry development by 2020, focusing on three main policies:conservation, ecological and industrial capacity building, and general management and governance policies. The results showed that the overall sustainable development index were 88.4837, while each individual policies’index was 75.0476,82.2132, and 78.2706, respectively.Accordingly, determine the local forestry under the influence of the protection and basic management policy is still in the weak state of sustainable development in 2020; the local forestry under the influence of the ecological and industrial policy is just entering the strong sustainable development status in 2020; the local forestry under the influence of three kinds of policy goes sharply into the strong sustainable development state in 2020.At the same time, By using 2008-2013 as reference, discussed the local forestry sustainable development under the influence of the every kind of policy and practical application problems:the ecological and industrial capacity building policy has the greatest impact on the local sustainable development, which accounted for 61.53%, while general management and governance policy accounted for 31.51%, and conservation policy was the least, about 6.96%. Three policies complement each other, interact with each other and be short of one cannot.We integrated use of three kinds of policy only and can urge the forestry sustainable development to achieve the ideal effect. We make full use of various policy measures, Based on basic management policy, in order to protect the policy for the barrier, powered by ecological and industry construction policy, promote the local forestry sustainable, steady and rapid development.