Replacing rubber plantations by rain forest in Southwest China—who would gain and how much? Michael Ahlheim & Tobias Börger & Oliver Frör Received: 7 February 2014 /Accepted: 28 October 2014 # Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 Abstract The cultivation of rubber trees in Xishuangbanna Prefecture in China’ s Yunnan Province has triggered an unprecedented economic development but it is also associated with severe environmental prob- lems. Rubber plantations are encroaching the indige- nous rain forests at a large scale and a high speed in Xishuangbanna. Many rare plant and animal species are endangered by this development, the natural water man- agement is disturbed, and even the microclimate in this region has changed over the past years. The present study aims at an assessment of the environmental ben- efits accruing from a reforestation project partly revers- ing the deforestation that has taken place over the past years. To this end, a Contingent Valuation survey has been conducted in Xishuangbanna to elicit local resi- dents’ willingness to pay for this reforestation program that converts existing rubber plantations back into for- est. It is shown that local people’ s awareness of the environmental problems caused by increasing rubber plantation is quite high and that in spite of the economic advantages of rubber plantation there is a positive will- ingness among the local population to contribute finan- cially to a reduction of existing rubber plantations for the sake of a partial restoration of the local rain forest. These results could be used for the practical implemen- tation of a Payments for Eco-System Services system for reforestation in Xishuangbanna. Keywords Contingent valuation . Rubber plantation . Reforestation . Environmental valuation . Ecosystem services . Southwest China Introduction Deforestation as a result of a rising demand for agricul- tural land is an often reported environmental problem. In the case of tropical Southwest China, one of the main drivers of this development is the cultivation of rubber trees (Hevea brasiliensis). In recent decades, this devel- opment has also reached the tropical areas of the People’ s Republic of China (PRC), namely the island of Hainan and the southern part of Yunnan Province. Xishuangbanna Prefecture, which is located at the southernmost rim of Yunnan Province, has witnessed a rapid expansion of rubber monoculture at the expense of both formerly undisturbed tropical rain forest and tradi- tional systems of shifting cultivation (Xu et al. 2014b). While before the reform of the Chinese agricultural sector in the 1980s rubber cultivation was strictly limit- ed to socialist state farms, today also smallholder Environ Monit Assess (2015) 187:3 DOI 10.1007/s10661-014-4088-8 M. Ahlheim Institute of Economics (520 F), University of Hohenheim, 70593 Stuttgart, Germany e-mail: ahlheim@uni-hohenheim.de T. Börger (*) Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Prospect Place, The Hoe, Plymouth PL1 3DH, UK e-mail: tobo@pml.ac.uk O. Frör Environmental Economics, Institute of Environmental Sciences, University of Koblenz-Landau, 76829 Landau, Germany e-mail: froer@uni-landau.de