How Societal Values Determine the Local Use of Forest Resources—Findings from the Rural Community Kegong (Northwest Yunnan, China)

Abstract

The transition from net deforestation to net reforestation in China has received much scientific attention, in the hope that, by understanding the underlying drivers and processes, it might be reproduced in other regions of the world. The scientific literature has suggested that this process was driven by the creation of off-farm opportunities and huge state afforestation programs by economic growth. Recent publications, however, have noted a lack of inclusion of local dynamics in this analysis. We used the social-ecological interactions (SEI) framework, designed for the assessment of ecosystem services in socio-ecological systems, to trace the causes and patterns of the local use of forest biomass in a village in Northwest Yunnan. Our results suggest that societal values, in particular, are key to understanding the local resource use underlying the forest transition in Yunnan. However, societal values have been neglected, both in the analysis of forest transition as well as in social-ecological systems research, in general.

Exploring the social and cultural values of trees and woodlands in England: A new composite measure

“…A large body of research has already explored the relationships people have with treescapes and the values and benefits they provide, whether they are accessing and undertaking activities in woodlands or green spaces with trees (O'Brien & Morris, 2014; Saraev et al., 2021), or whether they are engaging with them through other means, such as visually, virtually or through livelihood activities (Marušáková & Sallmannshofer, 2019). Studies have also explored and identified these values with indigenous communities (Angarita‐Baéz et al., 2017; Plumb et al., 2012; Sangha et al., 2019), urban dwellers (Li et al., 2019), national park visitors (Považan et al., 2015; Sumner & Lockwood, 2020), rural communities (Lee et al., 2020; Nassl & Löffer, 2019), forest owners and managers (Aukema et al., 2011) and city park visitors (Arnberger et al., 2020; Rudl et al., 2019).…”

The Influences of Livelihood and Land Use on the Variation of Forest Transition in a Typical Mountainous Area of China

“…However, previous research into forest transition in China paid little attention to the micro-relationship between livelihood and land use and their further influence on forest transition. They mainly focused on the Returning Farmland to Forest Program (RFFP) [46,50], economic growth and government policies [3,18,[51][52][53], societal values about the forest resource [54] and natural disaster stimulation [55]. Moreover, questions regarding the time of forest transition in China and understanding of the process and mechanism of time and space variation of forest transition were not addressed adequately.…”