Rural wood consumption patterns of local and immigrant households with differentiated access to resources in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, China

In Xishuangbanna, China, rubber production has spread rapidly, resulting in extensive land use changes and an increasing influx of migrant workers who have come to find work on the plantations. These migrant workers have limited access to subsidies and the local collective forest due to the household registration system in China called hukou. To assess how these policy-based restrictions on access affect wood consumption and local communities, a case study was conducted in Manlin village, Xishuangbanna, undertaking a household and weight survey with local and immigrant households. The results show no significant difference in firewood consumption between the subpopulations, despite predominantly more local than immigrant households have access to subsidised alternative energy sources. On the other hand, limited access to the collective forest is found to influence the choice of housing materials and living standards in immigrant households as they cannot access timber or afford brick houses. This paper highlights rural issues connected to the hukou system and suggests that rural energy and resource policies should take the growing population of immigrant workers into consideration in future to expand the reach of the polices to the de facto and not only de jure rural population and thus optimise policy efficiency.