Forest certification plays an important role in the global trade of legal, sustainably harvested timber. There is no accurate definition of how international forest certification systems impact international trade from a global perspective. This paper is intended to evaluate the influence of forest certification on international trade, so that it can provide a scientific basis for the improvement of the international forest certification systems and for the development of relevant forestry industries in different countries. First, the influence of forest certification on international trade of forest products is explained in the economic model; hence, four hypotheses are put forward. Second, to test these hypotheses, we verify the panel data of bilateral trade and forest certification of all forest products among 67 economies from 2009 to 2018 by incorporating forest certifications into the gravity model. Finally, tests by country groups and product groups were further analyzed, respectively. The results show that: (1) The extended Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood (PPML) estimation solves the problem of the heteroscedasticity and zero trade value problems of the gravity model well in the forest industry. (2) Forest certification has an export competitive effect, a trade barrier effect, as well as common language effect. (3) Forest certification has asymmetric trade effects. The export competitive effect of forest certification in developing countries is greater than that in developed countries. Forest certification has become a trade barrier for developing countries, especially in the process of trade with developed countries. The common language effect is higher during the trade between developed and developing countries. The export competitive effect of wood products is higher than that of furniture products. Forest certification has trade barrier effect on wood products in developing countries, while it has trade barrier effect on furniture products in developed countries.
Based on panel data from 30 provinces from 2001 to 2018 in China, this paper explores the effects and mechanisms of green urbanization on the forestry green total factor productivity (FGTFP) in the context of carbon neutral strategy using a two-way fixed effects model and instrumental variables. The results show that: Firstly, as a sector with ecological and economic benefits, ignoring carbon sink output tends to make FGTFP overestimated. Secondly, green urbanization has a significant positive contribution effect on FGTFP, and this finding still holds after a series of robustness tests including instrumental variables. Thirdly, green urbanization can indirectly promote FGTFP by stimulating the integration of forestry and tourism and strengthening environmental regulations. Fourthly, there is regional heterogeneity in the impact of green urbanization on FGTFP, i.e., the promotion effect of green urbanization on FGTFP is more significant in non-state forest areas compared with state-owned forest areas. Based on the above conclusions, the following countermeasures are proposed: firstly, attaching importance to green urbanization and strengthening environmental constraints; secondly, relying on green urbanization to drive the integration of forestry and tourism; thirdly, actively promoting the construction of green urbanization and green development of forestry in non-state forest areas, while vigorously developing the carbon sink economy to crack the transformation dilemma of backward state forest areas.
Clarifying the spatial correlation and driving mechanism of wood-based products trade network is conducive to promoting the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) to a higher level. Firstly, we explored the characteristics of spatial correlation and evolution tendency of raw material-type wood-based products trade network (TN-WFPM) and product-type wood-based products trade network (TN-WFPP) from the overall characteristics, centrality, and node coreness of the networks according to social network analysis method. Then we analyzed the driving mechanism of the spatial correlation according to the quadratic assignment procedure (QAP). The results show that, compared with TN-WFPM, the density, reciprocity, and agglomeration of the TN-WFPP are relatively stronger. The centrality and evolution characteristics of RCEP countries are different in the networks. The coreness of China and Thailand in the TN-WFPP has always been in the top two, while the coreness of China, Japan, and Korea has increased significantly and China has been the top since 2010 in the TN-WFPM. Factors like cultural distance, forest resource endowment, forest certification area, economic scale, economic distance, and free trade agreements (FTA) have significant impacts on the spatial correlation of wood-based products trade among RCEP countries. Furthermore, the impacts of different factors on the two kinds of networks are heterogeneous.
The influence of the nontimber forest products (NTFPs) on the coordinated economic and ecological development has received considerable attention, where the results are mixed. This study took Lin’an District in Zhejiang Province of China as an example for analysis. Using long-term (more than 40 years) data, system coupling and autoregressive distributed lag models were combined to analyze the effect of NTFP development on coordinated economic–ecological development. The results show that large-scale commercial NTFP development positively affected coordinated economic–ecological development, and a long-term stable equilibrium relationship between them existed. The degree of regional economic–ecological coupling increased from 0.05 in 1978 to 0.98 in 2019, and both area and value of NTFP had a significant effect on the coupling degree at the 5% level. These findings indicate that NTFP development is an effective method to promote the coordinated development of the economy and ecological environment especially in mountain areas, and the government should encourage NTFP development by ecological management, strengthening policy guidance, and providing technological innovation support, etc.
China’s dairy product import volume and output continue to grow rapidly, and to a certain extent, it will form a substitute for the Chinese dairy market. Therefore, it is necessary to study the impact of the import of dairy products on the technological progress of raw milk production in China. Using the data from 2005 to 2017, this paper uses the DEA model and the input-output model to analyze the impact of China’s dairy product imports on the technological progress of raw milk production. The model results show that: (1) there are differences in the technological content of dairy products from different importing countries; (2) The total technological content of imported dairy products hinders the improvement of the technological progress index of small, medium and large-scale production of raw milk in China, and has the most prominent negative impact on the technological progress of large-scale raw milk production in China; (3) The technological content of dairy products imports from New Zealand, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and other countries can help improve the technological progress index of China’s moderate-scale production of raw milk, while importing countries from the United States, Canada and other countries hinder it.