Study On Environmental Cost For Sustainable Management Of Commerical Plantation

As the major component part of the terrestrial ecosystem, forest plays an irreplaceable role in sustaining ecological balance for ecosphere of Earth. However, worldwide forest resources have been destructed seriously since the Industrial Revolution, still disappeared at the speed of 20 million hectare each year at present. It had made great contribution to economic growth destructive exploiting forest resources on one hand, and the man face serious environmental crises like soil degradation, erosion, desertification, shortage of water resources, biodiverstiy decline, air pollution and green-house effect, on the other. It was an important way to restore vegetation, reduce pressure on natural forest logging and protect ecological environment to make vigorous effort to develop plantation, has been given much more attention by more and more states in the world. China is a country deficient in forest resources and one of that whose forest was devastated seriously. Meanwhile, the accumulative area of established plantations in China reached 46 million-hectare and ranks the first in the world. It is no doubt that China has get a great achievement in plantation development, in the same time, many of the ecological environmental and economic crises China has to confronted with, such as soil erosion, pests and diseases, long term degradation of productivity were not desired. Those crises were particularly serious for commercial plantations whose main task was to supply timber. The fragility of forest ecosystem and pests and diseases and degradation of productivity result from pure stand and irrational management of commercial plantations have not just brought about harm to peripheral ecological environment but also made the expected economic goals like timber harvesting of management of commercial plantations can hardly be reached. In light of the above problems, and targeted with environmental costs for sustainable management of commercial plantation, the economics background, economic theory, cost elements, cost accounting and indicators and methods, cases of environmental costs accounting for commercial plantations, policies and approaches of environmental costs for commercial plantation have been systematically and comprehensively studied in the dissertation. The dissertation has obtained 4 aspects of preliminary achievements, which are: (1) Conception of environmental costs for commercial plantation management has been put forward. Environmental costs was a difficulty in the field of environmental economics study, both in oversea and domestic the relevant study focuses were to analyze and account economic losses on environment from industrial pollution and using natural forest, the study on environmental costs for management of commercial plantations was still a gap yet. In the light of environmental damages such as soil erosion, pests and diseases, biomass losses and degradation of productivity caused by land clearing, site preparation, tending treatment and harvesting in the process of commercial plantation management, all these factors have been incorporated into environmental costs and cost accounting and control for them were also conducted in the dissertation; (2) A classified system of environmental costs for commercial plantation has been set up. The economics background of environmental costs, virtual environmental costs of SEEA, environmental economic losses (environmental costs) in using resources (including forest resources) of SNA, types, natures, laws, assessment and accounting methods of marginal external costs in pricing natural resources were systematically commented, and on the basis of that, in view of the characteristics of commercial plantations like long cycle, various cutting cycle, ecological fragility and widespread influence, conception and types of both dominance and recessive environmental costs for commercial plantation as well as conception and types of convergence and overflow environmental costs of dominance and recessive environmental costs have been put forward in the dissertation. (3) Accounting of environmental costs for commercial plantation has been conducted. Targeted with the main commercial plantation species of Chinese fir (Cunninghamia laceolata) and Mason pine (Pinus massoniana) in Southern China and in view of stand growth losses of different generation ones caused by degradation of productivity, stand volume losses by pests and diseases, fertility losses with soil erosion by site preparation and biomass losses by harvesting, case studies on recessive, dominance, convergence and overflow environmental costs for commercial plantation management have been conducted in the dissertation respectively; (4) Conception of environmental management for commercial plantation has been advanced. On the basis of analysis and study on forest sustainable harvesting, forest ecosystem management, near nature forest and new forestry theory, sustainable management models for controlling environmental costs for commercial plantation have been elaborated, and environmental management strategies for commercial plantation, developing plantations, speeding up market orientation process and establishment of environmental certification system and drawing up criterion and indicators for sustainable management have also been put forward in the dissertation.