Submitted to Australia Centre for International Agricultural Research, (ACIA))

As China quickly becomes the world largest market and supplier of forest products over the past decade, her domestic policy change and ensuing supply trends becomes interesting to many. As being increasingly recognized, changes of China’s domestic policy and wood supply have had drastic impacts on world market and global forest resources. Despite the significance of the issue, understanding of China’s unique policy framework, institutional foundation and future supply trends in forest products remains limited.

A new EfD/RFF Book titled "Land Reforms in Asia and Africa - Impacts on Poverty and Natural Resource Management" is planned for 2012. Editors are Professors Stein Holden and Keijiro Otsuka.

The research project on land reforms is ongoing, and a first book workshop was held on Jan 24-25, 2010, at Peking University.

This paper relates the key findings of the optimal economic enforcement literature to practical issues of enforcing forest and wildlife management access restrictions in developing countries. Our experiences, particularly from Tanzania and eastern India, provide detail of the key pragmatic issues facing those responsible for protecting natural resources.

This report documents recent policy innovations for the conservation and management of ecosystem services in China.

Knowing the local opportunity costs of restricting access to forest land and resources for conservation purposes is an important input to the design of cost-effective conservation schemes that minimize adverse effects on poor forest users.

For Costa Rica’s parks and reserves, a threatened location is the key to effectively avoiding deforestation

In forests managed by participatory management in Tanzania, “volunteer” patrollers often enforce access restrictions, receiving a share of collected fine revenue as incentive. The authors explore how shared revenue and alternative sources of forest products for villagers determine the patrollers’ enforcement effort and decision to take bribes rather than report violators.

EfD in Ethiopia, the Environmental Economics Policy Forum for Ethiopia (EEPFE) will be co-hosting a one day workshop with Forum for Environment on Tuesday 8 September 2009.

The main theme of the workshop will be on accounting and taking stock of land, soil and forestry resources in Ethiopia.

The workshop will be chaired by Dr Alemu Mekonenn, Coordinator of EEPFE.

Dr Menale Kassie, EEPFE Research Associate will present papers related to the theme of the workshop. The papers being presented are:

The Kakamega Forest is the only remaining tropical rainforest fragment in Western Kenya and hosts large numbers of endemic animal and plant species. Protected areas were established decades ago in order to preserve the forest's unique biodiversity from being converted into agricultural land by the regions large number of small-scale farmers. Nonetheless, recent research shows that degradation continues at alarming rates.