Influence On Ecological Environment Of Farmers’ Livelihood Under The Background Of A New Forest Tenure Reform

In June,2008, a new round of reform of collective forestry rights closely related with farmers’livelihood has been put into force. With the rapid development of industrialization, urbanization and destroy of ecological environment, the man-land relations nowadays, under the forest reform policy, exploring the relationship between farmers’livelihood and the ecological environment has an important significance for building a harmonious forest area and achieving ecological civilization. This paper, taking Jingshan county of Hubei Province as case study, basing on the ideas that livelihood capital affects livelihood strategies and livelihood strategies affect ecological environment, investigates the present situation of livelihood capital, livelihood strategies, and ecological footprint under a new round collective forest tenure reform, constituting the regular understanding of farmers’livelihood and ecological environment, then putting forward the public policy of forest tenure reform, providing scientific basis for the reform’s smooth progress and the comprehensive development.(1) Under the background of a new forest tenure reform, human capital constituting the most important basis for farmers to earn a living, the distribution of natural capital is unbalanced; the contribution rate of physical capital and financial capital is low; social capital is the weakest. After the implementation of forest reform policy, the types of livelihood strategies are increased. Livelihood strategies mainly have four types:the pure households, agriculture and industry household, non-agricultura and industry household, which show a trend of diversification and non-agricultura. As to the ecological footprint in consumption, production is larger than living.(2) Natural capital has a significant impact on the pure households; human capital and physical capital have an impact on agriculture and industry household; the pure household has a greater effect on the environment in all kinds of livelihood strategies, so non-agricultural livelihood and diversifications should become an important channel to educe pressures on the ecology; In the meanwhile, woodlands should improve the utilization rate and become an undertake point to reduce farmlands’ecological pressures under the new forest tenure reform.(3) Under the mutual influences of institutional factors and non-institutional factors, farmers’livelihood affects the ecological environment. Institutional factors include the loss of labor resources, the governments’investment, information communicated degress, policy execution, woodlands’distribution, etc; non-institutional factors mainly include educational level, infrastructure, agricultural development pattern, consumption concept and energy utilization, etc.(4) To promote farmers’livelihood realizing transformation, and under the goal of building harmonious forest area and achieving ecological civilization, it is urgent to put forward policy suggestions to improve the ecological environment under the new forest tenure reform from two aspects, namely institutional aspect and non-institutional aspect. As for the institutional aspect, it can combine the advantage of forest area to develop the characteristic industry, increase government’s investment in rural areas, strengthen the propaganda power of policy, and enhance the transparency of policy implementation, etc. Non-institutional policies include improving the level of local education, enhancing the infrastructure construction, changing the traditional modes of agricultural production, promoting the healthy consumption concept and improving the energy utilization structure, etc.