Despite unprecedented efforts at reforestation in recent decades, China’s nativeforests continue to be displaced by plantations. Collective forest land (CFL) – land owned by rural households/communities – accounts for 60% of China’stotal forest land and harbors nearly half of its remaining native forests. How-ever, China’s existing policy structure for native forests suffers from consid-erable deficiencies with regard to CFL, most notably because policies provideno mechanism for restoring native forests on CFL. Rectifying these deficienciesrequires that China’s management approach toward CFL forests recognize thevalue of forests, especially native forests, for things other than tree crop pro-duction. In particular, policies must account for biodiversity in assessing theecological conditions and values of forests and must provide incentives to pro-tect and restore native forests. An opportunity has arisen to incentivize nativeforest recovery on CFL through the newly announced “mechanism of com-pensation for ecological protection” (MCEP), introduced in May 2016 and ontrack to become China’s umbrella policy for ecosystem protection. Currently,however, MCEP does not explicitly target CFL, and it contains no incentivesfor restoring native forests. Adding these elements to MCEP could herald arenaissance for China’s diminishing native forests and associated biodiversity.The Chinese government should not let this opportunity slip away.
