Southern Collective Forest Property Research

Since New China was established in 1949, the property fight system of collective forest in South China has been changed time and again. Especially after the policy of China's reform and opening up, the forestry property right system was changed with tracks of"Combination"or"Separation". The diversity of the climes in Southern China and different routes of reform of the forestry property rights leaded to its complexity to be solved. Furthermore, the forestry property fight combined with the benefit, or called by"fight and benefit bundle". As the result of that it was quite difficult to find a good way to distribute the fight and benefit by simply implementing"combination"or"separation". This paper shows an overview of the central theme of reform on the collectively-owned forestry system to understand the major factors that influenced policy formulation, and the outcomes of the forestry property system changes in the aggregate representing a paradigm shift to identify the roles of governments and local farmers in relation to alternative policy and institutional options, based on review of history change of collectively-owned forestry system and the village-level case study in South China by applying the theoretics related to property economics and law, to find a way to balance the requirement and the supply of property for diversity of benefits, as well as sustainable development of forest management and farmers' incomes. The main conclusion was as follows:(1) From"Three Decisions"Policy in 1981 to now, the collectively-owned forestry system was caught up in a whirlwind of change with compulsive implementation mainly, which result in many negative factors in community economy and forest management. The particularity of location of collectively-owned forestry come to a decision that the institutional arrangement of the collectively-owned forestry system must focus on tradeoff among livelihood outcomes, community-based economy and the environmental outcomes, which are linked each other, and the inner mechanism and supporting measures must be on the premise of multi-purpose managements.(2) The impact of different socio-economic conditions on equity and efficiency option in utilization of forestry resource is the key factor to be figured on for formulation of the policy. The economic value of forestry resource in the undeveloped regions is mainly act on the life security of all collective members, while it is mainly act on the investment benefit in developed regions. The basic task of reform of the forestry property system at the current stage is to implement equitably the allocation of preliminary forestry property, i. e., abided by the principle of equity, while it would be to focus on the improvement of efficiency during the shift of forestry property, i. e., abided by the principle of efficiency. (3) An stakeholder analysis shows that local government in forestry regions strongly interveried with the forestry-based activities with excessive"Power Rent-seeking". The farmers' earning rights were serious restricted during their management process due to enormous externality. Therefore, the HRS(Household Responsible System) can not radically settle the issue of the property fight while the local government in the forestry region would, be actually"Owners". So the institutional designs of the collectively-owned forestry system have to focus on the externality issue when the attention is paid to the earning right and dispose of properties.(4) Under the current institutional framework of collectively-owned system of forestry resource, the farmers' participatory decision-making is the key for the reform of forestry property system to ensure their economic benefit. Therefore. under current rural forestry administration management system, the democratic decision-making system through putting the villagers representative system into effect is the solution to ensure the farmers' benefit and to alleviate benefit conflict.(5) The well-implemented institution needs the appropriate condition. The institutional arrangement of property fight can not solve the all problems of resource allocation, and the restitution change of property right need to reform the supporting institution correspondingly. The logging quota has not been a well-working policy to reach the management objective of consumption of umber less than the growth of standing store of timber; on the contrary it may be the main obstacle for farmers to involve in the forestry-based activities. The design of new logging policy in relation with the new collectively-owned forestry system is an urgent task.