Research On Incentive Mechanism Of Forest Carbon Supply

The impacts of climate change could not be ignored. The world has tried to achieve the goal of limiting the rising temperature in two centigrade by the end of this century. As the biggest emitter in the world, China has intended to achieve the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030, and increase 4.5 billion m3 of the forest volume based on 2005’s level. To achieve the forest volume target, four main types exist in forestry activities specially aimed for increasing forest carbon, including government directly invested forest plantation, non-government invested forest plantation, international and domestic carbon market driven forest plantation. However, according to our investigation and collected data, some problems including the forest land source are not sustained, the man who responsible for management and protection is not clear, tending measures are lacked, will affect the forest carbon increasing target. Therefore, based on the core question, how to stimulate forest carbon supply and produce, this research began with the public goods characteristics of forest carbon. The cost-benefit analysis was done to evaluate different carbon sequestration strategies and policy instrument, aimed to give suggestions from two aspects by answering these questions, i.e. stimulate what and how to stimulate.Based on the theory of supply of public goods, the theory of externality and others researches, and combined with the feature of forest carbon and its current development status, this study firstly analyzed the efficiency of three different forest carbon sequestration strategies, including the non-forest land for afforestation, changing forest management mode and the logging ban, providing an explanation of the current model and basis for stimulate what. Secondly, the government supply of forest carbon was analyzed, and a theoretical framework for cost-benefit analysis of different policy instruments was constructed. By using the mathematical model and the data of Chinese fir from Guangdong province, empirical study was done to explain efficiency of different policy instruments and provide the basis for how to stimulate. Thirdly, based on data from field research, the character of forest managers, their awareness to forest carbon and willingness to participate in forest carbon supply were analyzed. And the rotation age was used as the decision variable to analyze carbon benefit impacts on forest management decision under different site condition, different tree species and different carbon pools by optimization model. It could provide basis for how to stimulate from the forest manager view. Finally, based on results from other chapters and forest resource status of China, the suggestions were proposed to stimulate forest carbon supply and production.The main results and conclusions of this research are as following.Firstly, after the first registered Clean Development Mechanism project in Guangxi, forest carbon projects according to certain standards including domestic methods have been developed very fast. By the end of December, 2015, there are more than 2 million hectare carbon forests in China, about 1% of the total forest area. Different suppliers such as Government and Non-Government organizations provide financial support for carbon forests development. Meanwhile, technical standards of carbon forest issued by State Forestry Agency provide guidelines for planting and managing carbon forests. Both of these are the reasons why carbon forests develop so fast. However, according to the further research, low participate rate of forestland contractors, simplification of ways of increasing forest carbon, and faced uncertain market demands will all caused problems in the near future.Secondly, in the same period of the project(30 years), afforestation on non-forest land are the most effective strategy for increasing carbon(106 CNY / t C), while the logging ban is the lowest(3085 CNY / t C). When facing and resource constraints, changing the way of managing forests is the second best option to increase forest carbon. When implemented the logging ban, sequestrated carbon amounts are 191 t C/ha, higher than afforestation(99 t C) and lengthen rotation age(28 t C) in the same time period. Implementation of the logging ban strategy will reduce local timber supply, however, the demand for timber has not changed, it will lead to increasing supply of timber from other areas, resulting in carbon leakage.Thirdly, climate change mitigation service provided by forest carbon sequestration are not only exclusive and competitive, the benefit could also extended to all nations and generations, so it is a global public goods. Therefore, the government should become the main supplier. Under the same site condition, extending the rotation age by subsidy cost lowest(12581 CNY) to fulfill the carbon increasing target, while the create carbon market instrument cost highest(52630 CNY). At the same time, when the site condition is better, the cost will be lower when using subsidies instrument to achieve the goal.Fourthly, from the forest managers’ point of view, the manage profitability could enhance when considering carbon benefits under current carbon price. However, the ability to increase forest carbon is limited, especially for short rotation species, which they do not change management decision at all. Discounted rate has more impacts on management decision, while carbon price has less. Sequestrated carbon amounts would be higher when choosing broad-leave tree species as carbon forests. However, long management period would increase its management risk, thus reducing the willingness to choose it by forest managers.Lastly, to deal with climate change and achieve the forest volume increasing target, Government should encourage forest managers to produce more forest carbon. For state-owned non-forest land, government could choose directly investment policy to afforest. The tree species should choose broad-leave trees which could sequestrate more carbon and have more growing time. For collective-owned non-forest land, government could choose subsidy policy to stimulate forest managers decide to choose what tree species and project period according to their endowment. For state-owned forests, government could use directly investment policy to stimulate forest managers to improve their management intensity. They could also use subsidy policy to encourage forest managers to extend forest rotation age. For collective-owned forest, government could use subsidy policy to encourage forest managers to improve their management intensity or extend forest rotation age to sequestrate more carbon.