2007

This paper by staff from Landesa (then called the Rural Development Institute) analyzes the development of the Chinese regulatory frameworks that govern forest tenure, with special attention to farmers’ rights to collective forestland and forest products. The paper reviews the history of communist law-making on forestland tenure; discusses aspects of the regulatory regime on usage rights to collective forestland and ownership rights to trees, with a set of recommendations for policy and legal reforms; and examines the policy and legal background for state expropriations and logging. The authors conclude that further legal reforms on collective forestland rights are needed. | Download PDF