Abstract
In this chapter, we estimate the impact on local household livelihoods of the Natural Forest Protection Programme (NFPP), which is the largest logging ban programme in the world, and aims to protect watersheds and conserve natural forests. In doing so we use a series of micro-econometric techniques for policy evaluation to assess the impacts of the NFPP on two interrelated facets of household livelihoods, namely income and off farm labour supply. We find that the NFPP has had a negative impact on incomes from timber harvesting but has actually had a positive impact on total household incomes from all sources. Further, we find that off farm labour supply has increased more rapidly in NFPP areas than non-NFPP areas. This result is strongest for employment outside the village. On the basis of these results, policy implications for household livelihoods are drawn.
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Notes
- 1.
1In fact, only the assumption that Y0⊥ D|X is necessary to estimate the average treatment effect on the treated using matching techniques.
- 2.
All estimation is carried out in STATA 9. The matching estimates use an Epanechnikov kernel for the kernel matching process, and a bandwidth of 0.1 for both the kernel and local linear matching. Alternative matching specifications were also estimated to assess robustness, and these did not significantly affect the results. The PSW procedure was carried out by weighting each observation by the propensity score, and then calculating the average of these weighted estimates. The standard errors for the PSM and PSW methods are estimated using bootstrapping with 500 repetitions. Lastly, all the models were estimated only within the region of common support.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the financial support of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development as well as the assistance of the School of Environmental Sciences of Beijing University in implementing the survey used in this chapter and particularly the help received by Ms. Tao Wendi. We are also grateful for the comments received by Prof. Jeff Bennett, Prof. Erwin Bulte, Dr. Ben Groom, Dr. Shinwei Ng, Prof. David Pearce, Prof. Jerry Warford, and Prof. Jintao Xu. We are also grateful for the comments received from the participants of the International Symposium on Evaluating China's Ecological Restoration Programs (hosted by the Forest Economics and Development Research Center of China's State Forestry Administration and Michigan State University in Beijing Oct 18–20) and in particular Prof. Runsheng Yin, Dr. Emi Uchida, Prof. David Newman and Prof. Bill Hyde.
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Mullan, K., Kontoleon, A., Swanson, T., Zhang, S. (2009). An Evaluation of the Impact of the Natural Forest Protection Programme on Rural Household Livelihoods. In: Yin, R. (eds) An Integrated Assessment of China's Ecological Restoration Programs. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2655-2_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2655-2_11
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