Economics of Forest Ecosystem Restoration: A Systems Approach

Abstract

Ecological restoration programs (ERP) and payments for ecosystem services (PES) have both attracted broad international academic and policy attention. While they are inherently linked and should be treated as integrated social -ecological systems (SES), they have been largely pursued by restoration ecologists and socioeconomic scientists separately, which is not conducive to the achievement of their common goal—sustainable ecosystem management. What this chapter does is to elucidate the potential limitations in the current ERP and PES research and call for truly integrated and more relevant studies to provide effective guidance to ecological restoration and ecosystem management. To that end, the authors will first review the primary research developments and bodies of literature in ERP and PES as well as in studying SES. Next, a systems framework that integrates social and ecological processes will be proposed, which will then be used to analyse China’s recent experience in converting degraded cropland to illustrate the need for and possible ways of treating both ERP and PES as part of an integrated process of forest ecological restoration and ecosystem management.