Deng’s decision key to saving forests
Print Edition
VILLAGE head Deng Wenshan recalls a decision made 19 years ago that transformed the mountains and his village.
Deng is the head of Hongtian Village, in southeast China’s Fujian Province, where more than 80 percent of the land is forest, and an important source of incomes.
Back in 1998, Deng was worried the forests might disappear due to illegal logging.
Though owned by the village, the forests were, in practice, managed by the Hongtian village council, which caused some villagers to feel left out.
“Trees were chopped down 24 hours a day,” said Deng. “Mills hired villagers to steal trees and some made huge profits.”
He said people thought that stealing from a collectively owned forest didn’t count as stealing.
Deng decided to experiment with privatizing the collective by granting villagers ownership of the land.
Four years later the practice was adopted nationwide as part of national agrarian reform.
Ownership certificates can be used as collateral for loans. Owners of forests can sell any portion of their rights and the land can be inherited.
“When villagers feel like they own the forests, they stop cutting, and start planting,” Deng said. “Everyone becomes a forest ranger.”
Once worried about the shrinking forests, Deng has seen the village’s forest cover grow by more than half since 1997. The average villager’s income from forestry has also risen from 300 yuan (US$45) in 1997 to over 9,300 yuan in 2016, accounting for 55 percent of their total income.
In recent years, local governments turned to conserving forests with ecological value, many of which were already under private ownership after the 2002 reform.
Luo Yongqin, owner of 200 hectares of forest in Fujian’s Yong’an, was told by the local government not to cut down the trees on some of his land, as part of a plan to limit logging in forests along highways, railways, waterways, and in areas of outstanding natural beauty.
Since 2013, Yong’an has ring-fenced 2,500 hectares of forest and is expected to expand that to 60,000.
“The practice in the province is being promoted nationwide,” said Yang Min, deputy head of Yong’an forestry bureau.
Boasting the fifth-largest forest area in the world, China aims to expand its forest cover to more than 23 percent by 2020 to combat climate change and soil erosion. Coverage was 21.7 percent at the end of last year.
Yong’an is a member of the Verified Carbon Standard, a voluntary program that allows the carbon credit to be traded worldwide.
China’s national carbon-trading market is expected to be launched later this year.
“That will encourage more forest carbon trading nationwide,” said Zhan Xinbiao, who runs Yong’an’s carbon-trading program.
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