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.

Current forest recovery efforts in developing countries are different from previous efforts in developed countries, especially since the rise of economic globalization in the 1980s. Therefore, forest transition theory should now consider factors relating to industrialization, urbanization, and globalization. While previous studies have mainly focused on the variable trade of primary sector products, this study applies a more holistic research perspective and discusses, more widely, the links between trade, adjustment of trade structure, FDI, and forest transition. The results suggest that the total export value has a significant negative effect on forest area and volume, while the percentage of non-primary products has a significant positive impact on forest volume and density in the 76 developing countries studied. These results indicate that a country or region may improve the forest resource conditions by upgrading the export structure through the development of export-oriented manufacturing and service industries during the process of global industrial restructuring. This demonstrates the need to consider the overall global economic situation of a country when exploring the effects of economic globalization on forest transitions. In addition, this study attempts to address extant concerns regarding the quality of forest transitions by moving beyond the analysis of forest coverage to explore changes in both forest area and forest volume.

Trade barriers of forest products are often advocated in the name of protecting forest resources. Whether the promoting of trade of forest products will increase or decrease the global forest resources is still a matter of debate. We offer an assessment of how forest product trade helps shape observed forest change, by relating wood consumption change to trade of forest products based on cross-section data from 61 countries in 2010. The result shows that wood outputs have positive effects on wood consumption. Compared to domestic production, the result suggests that imports of forest products can help reduce wood consumption. This may indicate that trade liberalization can promote the allocation efficiency of timber resources across the global, which can improve the utilization efficiency and reduce the wood consumption in the world to protect the global forest resources. It is suggested that the high-efficient harvest and wood-processing technological transfer should be advocated in the international community to contribute to global forest conservation.

Industrial spatial agglomeration is an important feature of modern industry development; however, little academic attention has been paid to the impact of industrial spatial agglomeration on the export of enterprises. Based on a large sample from a Chinese industrial enterprise database, this paper applies the EG index method to measure the spatial agglomeration level of forest products’ manufacturing and further explores its impact on exports. The results show that the spatial agglomeration level improved slightly in China’s forest products’ manufacturing during 1999–2009. However, the spatial agglomeration level of China’s forest products’ manufacturing is lower than is the average level of the total manufacturing industry. The regression results show that the level of spatial agglomeration has a significant positive impact on the export of enterprises in China’s forest products’ manufacturing industry. This may imply that the spatial agglomeration effect has not yet been fully exploited, and the level of spatial agglomeration in China’s forest products’ manufacturing industry needs to be further improved.