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Economics of Forest Ecosystem Restoration: A Systems Approach

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Post-Faustmann Forest Resource Economics

Part of the book series: Sustainability, Economics, and Natural Resources ((SENR,volume 4))

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Abstract

Ecological restoration programs (ERP) and payments for ecosystem services (PES) have both attracted broad international academic and policy attention. While they are inherently linked and should be treated as integrated social -ecological systems (SES), they have been largely pursued by restoration ecologists and socioeconomic scientists separately, which is not conducive to the achievement of their common goal—sustainable ecosystem management. What this chapter does is to elucidate the potential limitations in the current ERP and PES research and call for truly integrated and more relevant studies to provide effective guidance to ecological restoration and ecosystem management. To that end, the authors will first review the primary research developments and bodies of literature in ERP and PES as well as in studying SES. Next, a systems framework that integrates social and ecological processes will be proposed, which will then be used to analyse China’s recent experience in converting degraded cropland to illustrate the need for and possible ways of treating both ERP and PES as part of an integrated process of forest ecological restoration and ecosystem management.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It should be noted that while the terms ‘environmental ’ and ‘ecosystem’ services are often used interchangeably in the literature, for the sake of the present article we refer only to ecosystem services—the human benefits derived from both natural and managed ecosystems.

  2. 2.

    The scrutinized journals include Agriculture, Ecosystem and Environment, Biological Conservation, Conservation Biology, Ecological Economics, Ecological Engineering, Environment and Development Economics, Environmental Management, Frontiers in Ecology and Environment, Journal of Applied Ecology, Journal of Arid Environments, Journal of Forest Ecology and Management, Restoration Ecology, and Water SA (South Africa).

  3. 3.

    Interestingly, after this article had been drafted, the authors were made aware of yet another recent review of restoration ecology by Brudvig (2011). In that chapter, he noted that “Past work has been overwhelmingly focused on site-level restoration, with assessment at the species-level of biodiversity. Relatively little effort has been directed toward understanding links between restoration and landscape processes or factors (such as land-use legacies, authors’ note) that determine historical contingency, nor has biodiversity been frequently assessed at the functional or genetic biodiversity levels (p. 5)”.

  4. 4.

    1 US dollar  = 6.3 yuan, according to the latest exchange rate.

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Acknowledgments

This study was partially funded by the US National Science Foundation. The authors appreciate Shashi Kant for his comments, and Erin Shi and Victoria Hoelzer-Maddox for their assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forestry, Michigan State University, 110 Natural Resources Building, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Runsheng Yin

  2. College of Economics and Management, Northwest Agricultural and Forestry University, No. 3, Weihui Road, Yangling, 712100, People’s Republic of China

    Runsheng Yin & Minjuan Zhao

Authors
  1. Runsheng Yin
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  2. Minjuan Zhao
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Correspondence to Runsheng Yin .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto, Willcocks Street 33, Toronto, M5S 3B3, Ontario, Canada

    Shashi Kant

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Yin, R., Zhao, M. (2013). Economics of Forest Ecosystem Restoration: A Systems Approach. In: Kant, S. (eds) Post-Faustmann Forest Resource Economics. Sustainability, Economics, and Natural Resources, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5778-3_9

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