Study On The Legal Compensation Mechanism Of Forestry Ecological Benefits

Forest, as a main body of land ecosystem, is the most perfect stock of resource, gene, water, carbon and energy. It has the function to improve the quality of the environment, keep balance of the ecosystem, and also to able to the implementation of sustainable development. Thus, the government distinguishes ecological forests from the existent forests to meet the needs of territorial security and environmental improvement. Article 8 in "Forest Law "1998 provides the legal foundation for compensation system of forestry ecological benefits, it says, "The country sets up funds for the compensation of forestry ecological benefits, used for constructing, nurturing, protecting and managing of the shelter forest and the special use forest which offered the ecological benefits. "We can find through the academic achievements on the forestry ecological benefits by domestic and international scholars that the function of ecological compensation is to keep and improve the forestry ecological benefits. From the point of view of environmental law, we should take theories of the ecological security, environmental rights, rights to survival, rights to development and environmental justice as the theoretical foundation in study on the compensation mechanism of forestry ecological benefits. The compensation of forestry ecological benefits should be defined as the prerequisite clearly with the rights and obligations between the owners of property right. The question of forestry property right in compensation of forestry ecological benefits involved, namely the limitation of forestry property right, mainly refer to unreasonable restriction or unreasonable regulation to forestry property right in legal rules. So the target in compensation of forestry ecological benefits should be the owner of forestry property right at first, so as to perfect the system of forestry property in China. While confirming the compensation standard, besides considering putting-into cost and opportunity cost, we should consider ecologically reasonable, economically feasible, societally acceptable as evaluation criterion also.The marketing of forest carbon sinks has been a new trend gradually in the world. And the international society has been considering distribution of discharge index of carbon dioxide within the capacity of ecological environment. The trade of dischargeright of carbon dioxide will come to be true in the world. Setting up the mechanism of carbon exchanges, will make a real historical change to Chinese forestry, and also, it will be impossible for China to remedy the funds-lacking drawbacks in avenue of public finance in compensation of forestry ecological benefits through getting a large amounts of funds from the carbon exchange. It provides the opportunity for perfecting compensation mechanism of forestry ecological benefits in China.We should optimize the current avenue of public finance in the compensation of forestry ecological benefits through three following ways, in order to structure the legal compensation mechanism of forestry ecological benefits which suit our country's national conditions: 1) perfecting the system of laws and regulations, defining the right border of the collective and other non-public owners of forestry property right clearly through legislating, providing a suitable legal basis for the compensation of forestry ecological benefits; 2)confirming the scale of ecological forests cautiously, compensating the ecological benefits to the ecological forests in enough amounts and 3) getting hold of the opportunity and potentiality in the international trade of the forest carbon sinks, raising more fund for the compensation of forestry ecological benefits.