Research On The Environment-related Trade Policies Of Forest Products From The Aspect Of Timber Traceability

US Lacey Act Amendments of 2008 put forward the legitimacy request for the timber and timber products to enter American market in the means of trade legislation for the first time. This initiative caused a worldwide emitationin, EU Timber regulation and Austrilia’s Illegal Logging Prohibition Bill, green government procurement policy of forest products, forest certification system and other similar environment-related trade policies have been emerging and seriously influencing the long-term rapid development of China’s forest products trade. Starting from the motivation of these environment-related trade policies, the whole Chinese society proposed and implemented a series of countermeasures respectively from the perspective of environmental protection and trade protection, which have achieved certain effects but so far still can not completely get rid of the influence of Lacey Act and other environment-related trade policies. Therefore, starting with Lacey Act, choosing the environment-related trade laws and regulations as the research object, and based on the analysis of research status at home and abroad, the paper proposes to open the field of vision, and to seek new ways and methods to deal with the Lacey Act and other environmental trade policies from the new perspective of timber traceability.Theoretically supported by the forest sustainable development, externality, trade protection and asymmetric information theories, the paper firstly makes a deep analysis of Lacey Act, and elaborates the essence of its Declaration and Due Attention Duty system is a requirement of timber traceability.Secondly, the paper systematically analyzes the international communities’response to Lacey Act, and forecast the development trend of the timber traceability standard in the field of forest product international trade, showing that:a relatively sound timber traceability standard system has been basically formed, and has become the latest forest product market access standard; and a worldwide timber traceability system is emerging.Thirdly, the paper theoretically analyzes the influence mechanism of timber traceability on the forest product export including the analysis of its influence mechanism, trade effect and influencing path, analysis results, showing that:in the short term timber traceability has negative restriction effects on the forest product export trade from the two aspects of quantity and price, but in the long term mainly has the positive trade promotion effect; Facing with the market access restriction of timber traceability, the forest product exporters only have to establish the timber traceability system so as to overcome the number restriction of the timber traceability standard and obtain more profits; The timber traceability system can promote the long-term development of the forest product export trade by increasing the transparency of information to reduce transaction costs, reducing trade friction through the mutual recognition of standards, increasing forest products’ legitimacy to expand demand, and reducing the export risk through the information feedback from the foreign market.Fourthly, based on analyzing the development status of China’s forest products trade, the paper qualitatively analyzes the negative and positive impacts of timber traceability standards on China’s forest product export, and uses the trade gravity model to empirically test the impacts’ degree, which results are consistent with the theoretical analysis conclusion:In the short term, the timber traceability standards resulted in a decline in China’s exports of forest products trade and the price competitiveness of traditional exported products, as well as a large number of enterprises’ bankruptcy and other negative effects; In the long-term, it pormoted the trade structure imperfection of China’s forest products, forest products’technical innovation and the developmentof Chinese forest certification system, and other positive effects. The test results shows that the timber traceability standards have started to produce positive influence on China’s exports of forest products, but still not very obvious, the TR value is only 0.35. Therefore, China needs to vigorously promote construction of China’s timber traceability system, so that the positive long-term promotion effect of the timber traceability on China’s forest products export can fully worke.Finally, learning from the construction experience of traceability system home and abroad, the paper proposes some suggestions on the construction and implementation of China’s timber traceability system, including:the framework construction of China’s timber traceability system from the four aspects of function, goal, content and development stage; the design of the timber traceability system; and the operation security measures of China’s timber traceability system from the four aspects of forestry standardization, socialization of information service, the legal and regulatory system.The establishment and implementation of China’s timber traceability system will not only enable China’s exported forest products to better meet the timber traceability requirements of Lacey Act and other international trade legislation, but also promote the improvement of Chinese timber traceability’s laws and regulations, forestry standardization, socialization of information service and supervision system, in order to promote the long-term development of China’s forest product trade.