Managing hillside landscapes as national forest: lessons learned from the Beijing Western Hills

Abstract

The question of how to sustainably manage hillside landscapes as national forests is a global concern, yet strategies for effective policy action remain to be discussed, especially in China where reforestation and nationalisation of barren mountains have ended up causing even more problems. While the existing studies of Chinese national forests mainly focus on general overviews of national policies that omit nuanced and empirically rich information, this paper presents instead a deep case study of the Beijing Western Hills in which occurred the first synthesis of hillside forest management instruments that now form Chinese public policy. The findings suggest that state intervention is indispensable to hillside forest management, but it may become financially unsustainable without private sector involvement. A transition to collaborative governance is necessary to broaden and diversify the range of revenues for and from hillside forests, and it should happen step-by-step so that those newly included in decision-making can get better prepared.