Forest Ecosystem Compensation Program (FECP) had been implemented in 11 provinces of China to “buy” (via provide subsidizes) forest service of watershed from the forest owners whose forest was claimed as Public Beneficiary Forest (PBF). FECP, as the first official program using name “compensation”, it tries economic approach to mediate the conflicts between conservation and community livelihoods. The case study found that due to the inertia of centralized planning system, top-down command-control approach is still used to get villagers involving in FECP, regardless of huge diversity of villagers in aspects of forest endowment, family labour styles, individual preference and willingness. The enforced approach had resulted in some negative impacts on the sustainability of FECP. Local forestry agencies and community people had recognize the constraints of the enforced approach and planned to test more adaptive, flexible and bargaining-allowed approaches in the 3 villages in the watersheds.
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