Research Topics
Each participant is encouraged to select a research topic as soon as possible. The topics listed below are meant to facilitate interested students to prepare their essays for application and outline their research projects once they have been accepted. If they prefer, students can pick topics of their own, so long as it is feasible for them to complete in a satisfactory manner.
1. Causes and effects of deforestation. China's depletion of its natural forests in the last 50 years is not well understood. This topic will address how the population pressures, the strategy of natural resource exploitation, and the old economic system have led to the "forest crisis," and what the social economic, and environmental consequences are.
2. Different responses to rural reforms. This topic will examine the linkage between production behavior and incentive structure under different institutional settings, the mechanism of market response to resource scarcity, the effect of policy uncertainty, and the equal importance of reform decision-making and implementation. It will also address the relevance of and approaches to community participation.
3. Carbon sequestration and biodiversity protection. Forests ecosystems can effectively mitigate the climate change and biodiversity loss. However, climate and biodiversity are global public goods, which imply that, while institutional frameworks for desirable land use and forest management changes must be established at the international level, actions are often taken at the national level. This topic will analyze issues related to arrangements for tree planting and forest management to offset carbon emissions and biodiversity loss, carbon credit and trading, and sharing benefits from genetic resource exploration.
4. Environmental cost-benefit analysis. The emphasis of this topic is how to define and assess environmental as well as economic costs and benefits, and how to estimate tradeoffs in a practical, rather than conceptual manner. China's ecological rehabilitation programs offer excellent examples to show the usefulness as well as appropriate methods to conduct this type of analysis.
5. Forest-based poverty alleviation. Forestry-based poverty alleviation has been well recognized by major international organizations. This topic will tackle the question of how to reduce poverty, and increase employment and income based on the sustainable production of timber and non-timber forest products.
6. Integrated watershed management. This topic will examine the relationship between upstream and downstream users, positive and negative externalities that downstream users may incur from upstream activities, the transaction costs and property regimes involved in resource management and use, and possible ways to allocate multiple uses and activities efficiently. It will also illustrate that, under certain circumstances, market-based innovations by the locals can be effective means to provide environmental services.
7. Agroforestry. Agroforestry is viewed as a major approach to combating food shortages, energy scarcities, and environmental degradation. China has the most extensive and impressive agroforestry systems in the world. This topic will investigate: What are the physical and economic conditions driving the integration of agriculture and forestry? How can crop, tree, and animal enterprises be mixed on the same land? What are the advantages and limitations of different systems in terms of sustainable land use?
8. Increased imports of wood products. The limited domestic supply and increased demand of wood products have driven China to aggressively seek international sources of supply. This topic will investigate: How large will China's timber deficit be in the next decade? What will be the impacts of the WTO entry and the logging bans on China's wood products markets? How will increased imports affect forests in exporting countries?