How can an alternative natural resource co-management system be established? —Evidence from Chinese community forestry

ABSTRACT

In developing countries, interest in community forest management (CFM) has steadily increased over the last decade. Based on the extended political institutional analysis and development (P-IAD) framework, this paper analyzes the Chinese CFM system by combining the political-economic context, rules-in-use, and discourses to show alternative co-management practices. We find that CFM is rooted in national-level development strategies, embedded government-society relationships, and social development claims. This governance structure determines that the public sector guides the development and utilization directions of forest resources based on development planning and national discourses, while community leaders serve both villagers and the public sector. Over the course of development, this co-management system undergoes dynamic adjustments and gradually fulfills the evaluative criteria, including employing varied institutions, ordinary rules, and cross-scale connections. Compared with the previous co-management system, the current system presents the features of national layer penetration, continuous power coordination, and development orientation. The experience of Chinese CFM shows that scholars should focus on the impact of national-level macro strategies and social construction on natural resource management, not just cooperation between civilian agencies and the community. The findings provide developing countries with new thoughts for designing natural resource management systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Natural resource management
• co-management system
• community forestry
• rural China
• political institutional analysis and development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 According to Clement (2010), ‘forest cover is a panacea’ was treated as a discourse, while we believe that it is not abstracted as a concept but as a description.

2 For example, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) declared that ‘food safety is more important than crop yield’, shaping social construction using advocacy.

3 In China, forestland is owned by the collective, and decentralization essentially provides farmers with management rights, thus generating the issues of the property rights period.

4 According to Hansen et al. (2018), approximately 17,000 articles are devoted to the dissemination of ecological civilization in China’s media each year.

5 For example, Jumbe and Angelsen (2007) claimed that there was central government involvement, but it was still a civilian agency (Forestry Department) and not one of those with the power to draw up the national strategy.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72273064, 41901263, 71773054), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (SKCX2023005), Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in Rural Studies, Tsinghua University (202209), and the Scientific Research Innovation Program Project for Philosophic Doctor of Jiangsu Province (KYCX22_0788).

Notes on contributors

Bohao Jin

Bohao Jin is a PhD Candidate in the college of public administration at Nanjing Agricultural University. He has research interests in community-based natural resource policy in developing country. He has been involved in natural resource policy development on numerous occasions in Jiangsu and Zhejiang Province, China.

Xianlei Ma

Xianlei Ma, Currently Full Professor (since 2015) in the college of land resource management at Nanjing Agricultural University, as senior researcher in the center for China land policy research. He obtained the PhD degree of economics in the college of environmental economics and natural resources management, Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He is interested in land institution, land resource sustainable use, with focus areas in land-related natural resources governance in the transition countries.

Yanqiang Du

Yanqiang Du, Associate Professor in the college of public administration at Nanjing Agricultural University. He obtained the PhD degree of management in the department of environmental science and engineering, Fudan University in Shanghai. His study work can be roughly divided into the following topics: (1) environmental economic and policy, such as the rural sustainable development of environmental policy; (2) rural natural resource governance in China.