Multiple drivers and pathways to China's forest transition

By Lingchao Li, Ashwini Chhatre, Jinlong Liu
Forest Policy and Economics | September 2019

DOI

doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2019.101962

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Li, Lingchao., Chhatre, Ashwini., Liu, Jinlong. Multiple drivers and pathways to China's forest transition Forest Policy and Economics doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2019.101962.

Forest Policy and Economics, 2019

Abstract

Forest transition theory proposes pathways that countries might follow to experience forest recovery, but countries currently undergoing forest transition do so in a global context fundamentally different from what it was just 50 years ago. Our study analyzes China's ongoing forest transition to extend forest transition theory in three ways. First, we analyze province-level outcomes to disentangle the multiple pathways through which forest transition occurs at the national level. Analysis of diverse drivers and outcomes at the provincial level is an important step toward revealing micro-level causal explanations of forest transition. Second, we investigate specific drivers of the forest transition operating across space and time. Specifically, mechanisms that operated across provinces within China were examined in addition to international factors using appropriate econometric methods. Third, we analyze changes in area, density, and volume of forests to represent different dimensions of forest recovery. The results show that environmental concerns and public investments in forest improvement were important determinants of increased forest area. Increase in forest volume was associated with a complex chain of factors involving China's shift to an export-oriented economy, labor out-migration, and the related reduction in forest dependence for livelihoods.Keywords: Reforestation; Migration; Exports; Forest policy

Ashwini Chhatre is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and currently serves as the Executive Director of the Bharti Institute of Public Policy (BIPP) at the Indian School of Business (ISB). Professor Chhatre is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research interests broadly centre on the dynamic cross-scale interactions between governance, economic development, and environmental protection. He relocated to India from the US in 2014 to join the faculty at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. He spent 13 years in the US, including five in graduate school at Duke University, where he was awarded a PhD in Political Science. In 2006-07, Professor Chhatre became the first Giorgio Ruffolo Post-doctoral Fellow in Sustainability Science at Harvard University, before joining the Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

Between completing his BA in Economics from the University of Delhi in 1990 and starting his PhD at Duke University, he spent 11 years working in different parts of India, primarily as a community organiser and social activist on issues related to natural resources such as land, forests, and water. A background in Economics, graduate training in Political Science, and a long-standing engagement with scholarship in Geography, Anthropology, Landscape Ecology, and Environmental History ensure that his research is never confined to a single discipline.

Professor Chhatre’s main research interests lie in exploring the intersection of democracy, environment, and development, with a focus on decentralised forest governance, climate change vulnerability and adaptation, and multifunctional agriculture. Over the past 20 years, the scope of his research projects has ranged from household-level to global analysis, consistently bridging research, policy, and practice.

He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of World Development Perspectives (2016-19), served as Senior Editor of Conservation Letters (2009-2014), and has published one book and several articles in leading journals including Science, and PNAS.

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Ashwini Chhatre