Study On The Standard Of Forest Eco-compensation Based On Opportunity Cost

Forest ecosystem is known as the "lungs of the Earth". It plays a very important role in the ecological security of the Earth. Under the traditional concept of development, people pursue the economic growth blindly and the forest ecosystem has been broken. With the deepening cognition of the importance of forest ecological benefit, people put more emphasis on the protection of forest ecosystem. As a coordinating mechanism of interests in the protection of forest ecosystem, the forest eco-compensation system has effectively promoted the protection of forest ecosystem. However, judging from the current situation, there are a series of problems both in the practical and theoretical field of the forest eco-compensation system. Particularly, there are many problems when designing the standard of forest eco-compensation, such as the compensation standard is low, the methods are unreasonable. A lot of studies have pointed out that, how to design the compensation standard is one of the key issues when establishing the forest eco-compensation system. This paper argues that lack of basic research on the forest eco-compensation system is one of the important reasons why there are so many problems when designing compensation standard. Lack of basic research causes a lot of problems in forest eco-compensation research field, such as unclear concepts, unreasonable analysis and cannot reach consensus.Study on the standard of forest eco-compensation is based on well-researched basic theory of forest eco-compensation system. An important part of this paper is the study on the basic theory of forest eco-compensation. Starting with the natural character of forest ecosystem, this paper deepens the study on the forest eco-compensation basic theory gradually. In this process, this paper analyzes the logical process of forest eco-compensation system, the essence of forest eco-compensation, the economic content of forest eco-compensation and the theoretical foundations. This paper suggests that the essence of forest eco-compensation system is a loss compensation mechanism and the economic content of forest eco-compensation is forest manager’s loss of economic output. Based on the analysis, this paper presents the view that the standard of forest eco-compensation should be based on forest manager’s opportunity cost and forest manager’s opportunity cost is the loss of economic output in the process of protecting forest ecosystem. Then through the in-depth analysis of forest manager’s opportunity cost in the process of protecting forest ecosystem, this paper argues that forest manager’s direct cost, forest manager’s loss of economic output and the loss of the region’s development are all forest manager’s economic loss in the process of protecting forest ecosystem. They can be unified under the concept of opportunity cost and they are the three meanings of forest manager’s opportunity cost. Then this paper introduces the idea of compensating by different stages and divides the development of economy and society into three stages. They are when the development level is not high, when the development level improved and when the development level further improved. Through analysis, this paper establishes the correspondence between the three meanings of opportunity cost and the three stages of the development and build the forest eco-compensation standard’s three stages mode based on opportunity cost. Then this paper examines the application effect of the mode by applying the mode on the case of Taibai Forestry’s NFPP. Through theoretical and empirical research, this paper may benefit the practice of forest eco-compensation system.