Forest certification has been widely hailed for its positive impacts on implementing sustainable forest management. Despite various adjustments to promote its adoption, most of the world's certified forests are in developed countries, with about 87% in Europe and North America. To analyse the reasons for the slow certification uptake in the developing world, two rounds of literature searches were conducted, and the hindrances identified were then discussed under six themes: forest quality, socioeconomic interactions, governance capacity, certification investment, firm expectations and market responses, and risk aversion and the attitude-behaviour gap. Among them, conventional institutions and governance are the most restrictive constraints. Certification, while a non-state form of governance, may not exercise its regulatory power freely through the market without being impeded by the unfavourable contexts in which it takes hold. Finally, recommendations were proposed from the perspectives of politics, legislation, market, and certification schemes to resolve the hindrances in achieving certification.

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Having a careful examination of government-leading student loan schemes in China and Hong Kong, we can find a lot of differences and learn something from these two counterparts which are very typical country or area faced by challenges in financing higher education in the context of transition from elitism to mass higher education. This research attempts to make a comparison of government-leading student loan schemes between Hong Kong and China in the new century. Then emphasis is put on the principles or core values namely efficiency, equity and adequacy, and determining their implications presented in student loan schemes in these two counterparts. Finally, the paper arrives at some recommendations for improvements in them.