Few people read this blog except by accident of googling. That makes sense to me. I'm not complaining. A significant percentage of the traffic hits a few old posts. They aren't remarkable in any way, they just have topics that are of interest to some but apparently are not often written about, so that my old pages float to the top. The one about muck fires in Florida and Indonesia is a good example.

Another old post that gets lots of traffic but not from Google deals with a subject of enduring interest.

The gist of the difference between US management of public lands and Canadian management is that the Canadian national government makes no attempt to actually do the management. That makes sense since 70% of their massive forest lands are owned by the government, a legacy of colonialism when it was all the King's forest, or the Queen's, and are still often called "Crown Lands". Instead they retain title to the lands but issue long term leases to groups and individuals who then exploit the resources as they see fit within regulatory bounds, and pay multiple fees, sometimes related to resources extracted, to the government. . .

The long term leases, called "tenures" are transferable. There's an approval process but one holder can sell tenure to a second party. This has profound implications for forest management since the resource value is in part a product of prior management. This is an even better example of where local management can be wise.

Forest management in developing countries is an important issue.

In China, forestry is undergoing reform aimed at giving the right to manage forests to individual households instead of collectively to villages. Many studies have shown that the efficiency of forestry improves when the forest is managed by individual families instead of by collectives.

Privatisation, i.e., if ownership should also be transferred from the village to the individual family, is a question that is under constant discussion among researchers and politicians in China. . .

The farmers value well-established rights of usage most. They want to avoid the risk of their land contract being terminated, they want priority rights when renewing their contract, and they do not want to wait more than a year to be allocated a harvest quota. These factors increase their willingness to invest in their forestry. Privatisation, i.e., that they would own the forest individually, is not seen as important.

"So far, the farmers in our study do not see any benefits from privatisation. Decentralisation of the power over the forest is important, however, to strengthen their rights of usage," says. Ping Qin.

Collective or private ownership are not the only options. The Canadian system of long term transferable leases has much to recommend it since it gets the incentives right. Management improves since the lease holder benefits from improving the land. Productivity increases and the value of the lease increases too. The lease can be sold for a profit, or borrowed against to make capital improvements.

My guess is that the Chinese farmers will see a value to private ownership in future, assuming that they enjoy decentralization in the present. Long term transferable tenures would give them most of the same benefits.