Legal Study On Government Functions Of Returning Farmland To Forest

"Global Environment Outlook 2000" has pointed out that the human right needs of forest and farmland has led the world's forests decreased by 35%, of which 30% changed into agricultural land. Human's over-exploitation of forest resources, as well as a large-scale deforestation and land reclamation has resulted in serious deterioration of the ecological environment, land desertification, serious salinization and frequent natural disasters. In response to the environmental crisis, from 1999, China has launched the Grain for Green Project. The public interest attribute of the Grain for Green Project determines that the government is bound to become a leading force in promoting the construction, and the demand for government intervention is inevitable. At present, there are many defects in government functions of returning farmland to forest in our country, which becomes an obstruct to the construction of the project. This paper, referring to foreign experience in returning farmland to forest projects, from a legal point of view, analyzes China's government functions of the returning farmland to forest and made a number of suggestions. Full-text consists of five parts.The first part is the fundamental analysis of the meaning of returning farmland to forest, characteristics and value basis. This article is from a legal perspective to explain the government functions of returning farmland to forest, but only on the basis of understanding the issues related to returning farmland to forests, we can better analyze and research the government functions of returning farmland to forests. Therefore, the interpretation of the concept of returning farmland to forest, and the understanding of the value pursuit of the returning farmland to forest is the beginning of this article for further argument.The second part demonstrates the theoretical basis for government intervention in returning farmland to forest. Clearing the necessity of government intervention in returning farmland to forest is the basis and premise for further study of the government functions of returning farmland to forest. This part, from the respective of both the sociology and economic law, demonstrates the theoretical basis of the government control of returning farmland to forest, revealing the inevitability that government actively carry out the functions of returning farmland to forest.The third part is about the survey and analysis to the foreign government functions of returning farmland to forest, and on this base indicates the revelation obtained from the experience abroad about improving China's Grain for Green functions of the government.The fourth section describes our current status of government functions of returning farmland to forest, and then from the analysis and research about the status of China's Grain for Green functions of the government, points out that the existence of the loss in our government functions of returning farmland to forest, in order to put forward a sound proposal later which lays a reality foundation.The fifth section discusses the legal concept about how to improve our government functions of returning farmland to forest, which is, mainly from the four aspects of the Government's legislative functions, financial functions, regulatory functions, and tax functions, demonstrated respectively, and then puts forward a sound proposal.