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Abstract
The most important measure in addressing the forest ownership/land use
rights market are the creation of forest land trade centers (FTC), which are
established to facilitate the transfer of forest lands in China. The aim of this
paper is to analyze the implementation, bottleneck, opportunity, challenge
and developing trend of FTCs, based on the status quo of the FTCs in
collectively-owned forest regions in Southern China. This paper uses PRA
approaches including questionnaires, semi-structured interview to survey
the status of forest land trade in the FTCs in four selected counties and the
perceptions of their staff, beneficiaries, local governments, county forestry
bureaus and Provincial Forestry Department. The study reveals that the
establishment and operation of FTCs are subject to a wide range of policy,
legal, financial and institutional constraints. The analysis shows that
different stakeholders have different opinions about their own benefits. The
staffs of FTCs are concerned about the future of the FTCs and recommend
to expand the extension of their services; Beneficiaries considered that the
forest land trade involves high transaction costs and a complex procedure.
Finally, this paper summarizes the experience and lessons about the FTC,
and discusses the Proposals to Improve the FTCs in future.