An estimation of the effects of China's forestry programs on farmers' income

Abstract

In the late 1990s, the Chinese government initiated some new programs and consolidated other existing programs of ecological restoration and resource development in its forest sector, and named them as Priority Forestry Programs, or PFPs. They include the Natural Forest Protection Program (NFPP), the Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP), the Desertification Combating Program around Beijing and Tianjin (DCBT), and the Wildlife Conservation and the Nature Reserve Development Program (WCNR). In addition to improving the environmental and resource conditions, a frequently reiterated goal of these PFPs is to enhance the income of rural residents. Thus, a question of great interest is: How has implementing the PFPs affected the farmers' income and poverty status? The objective of this chapter is to address this question, using a fixed-effects model and panel data from over 2,100 households in ten counties of Sichuan, Hebei, Shaanxi, and Jiangxi Provinces. The empirical evidence indicates that their effects are mixed. The impacts of the SLCP, the NFPP, and the DCBT are significantly positive, whereas the impact of the WCNR is negative and the SBDP has little effect on household income. Furthermore, these impacts show substantial variations in different counties. Also, land for home gardening, labor for off-farm employment, and technical and institutional changes play major roles, implying that more attention should be directed to increasing income from cash crops, off-farm employment, and training and extension. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.