1. Introduction
In recent decades, the world economy has experienced rapid growth; however, at the same time, forests have been ignored and deforestation has grown. Since the carbon emissions caused by deforestation cause problems such as global warming, human diseases, and the extinction of large numbers of species (Strassburg et al., 2012; Roopsind et al., 2019) [
1,
2], the protection of forests remains essential to ensure environmental quality, sustainable social development, and biodiversity (Nanni et al., 2019; Sloan, 2022) [
3,
4]. Therefore, it is necessary for governments to take measures to protect forests. In this vein, many scholars have investigated the notion of forest growth from the perspectives of corruption, infrastructure, urban expansion, agriculture food, etc. (Hosonuma et al., 2012; Shi et al., 2017) [
5,
6]. However, among the existing literature, few studies have examined globalization’s direct impact on forest growth, and no studies have investigated what factors could influence the impact of the former upon the latter.
There are two opposing ideas regarding the role of globalization in forest growth. One strand of literature suggests that globalization harms forest growth. For instance, Meyfroidt et al. (2010) [
7] state that economic globalization may bring about the displacement of deforestation overseas; this can facilitate forest transitions on a national scale but reduce the regional or global environmental benefits of policies related to forest growth. Rudel (2002) [
8] also state that globalization may destroy primary forests in some areas. Similarly, Ramsfield et al. (2016) [
9] suggest that natural forest ecosystems will experience continuing threats caused by globalization. Aide and Grau (2004) [
10] argue that, even though the globalization process does some good to high-yield agriculture—as it increases market demand and decreases cost, as well as improving agricultural production through technology—it ignores many environmental issues such as land use and forests due to the expansion of agricultural production activities that require more land, eventually causing greater deforestation (Grau and Aide, 2008) [
11].
Other researchers argue that globalization benefits forest growth. For instance, Daniels (2009) [
12] argues that globalization causes a decline in beef prices, which eventually positively impacts forest cover in Costa Rica due to the concomitant reduction in animal husbandry. Meyfroidt and Lambin (2009) [
13] argue that current forest recovery in several Latin American countries was caused by a reduction in domestic agricultural production heralded by international trade. Li et al. (2017b) [
14] studied the influence of economic globalization by empirically examining the impact of trade on forest transition via data for 76 developing countries. They concluded that, if other factors remain unchanged, net import of wood would reduce deforestation activities. Hecht et al. (2006) [
15] proposed that, while globalization causes deforestation in many regions in Latin America, it also causes greater forest resurgence, which can lead to more forest growth. For example, the recuperation of forests in EI Salvador was an outcome of economic and political globalization. Similarly, some studies propose that globalization is highly related to forest management, as it affects land use policy, as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and conventions (Meyfroidt and Lambin,2011; Hecht, 2010) [
16,
17], Grainger (2005) [
18]). In addition, Rudel (2002) [
8] stated that globalization does some good to the secondary growth of forest in some places.
By browsing the existing literature, it is easy to find that previous studies attributed more importance to drivers of forest deforestation and forest growth; however, these conclusions are controversial, and studies that empirically test the direct influence of globalization on forest growth, as well as those that consider whether the impact of globalization on forest growth is consistent among different countries, are rare.
According to a review of the relevant literature and a theoretical analysis of the impact of globalization on forest growth, this paper uncovers the relationship between globalization and forest growth and examines whether the impact of globalization on forest growth varies among different countries; as such, it fills the existing research gap related to the relationship between globalization and forest growth. Based on this approach, we propose the following questions: Does the overall or specific aspect of globalization exert a significant impact on forest growth? Is the impact of globalization on forest growth consistent among different countries?
Globalization may affect forest growth through the following transmission channels. First, according to the traditional theory of international trade, globalization usually causes three effects: a scale effect, a composition effect, and a technology effect (Copeland and Taylor, 2013) [
19]; these may change economic activities and production methods and eventually affect the utilization of land or forests. However, as far as we are concerned, globalization not only means economic globalization or trade openness but represents a multifaceted phenomenon with essential social and political dimensions, as the environmental problem is a worldwide issue on which nearly all countries agree (Yang et al., 2021) [
20]; thus, the deforestation caused by the scale effect of globalization may be somewhat weakened (Li et al., 2017a) [
21], meaning that international trade or investment is more likely to present a technological effect for improving production methods in an environmentally friendly manner (Wang et al., 2021b) [
22].
Second, Lambin and Meyfroidt (2011) [
23] propose that the forest transition should be linked to the transfer or replacement of deforestation activities, i.e., globalization can bring about replacements overseas, which may promote national forest growth by reducing domestic deforestation. Furthermore, globalization changes food generation and supply by international trade, reduces domestic agriculture production and eventually stimulates the forest resurgence (Grau et al., 2013) [
24]. Moreover, globalization is critical for building and spreading international networks, which can eventually promote forest growth through environmental globalization (Grainger, 2005) [
18]. In addition, Kull et al. (2007) [
25] suggested that the labor migration led by globalization could cause a greater remittance (the widespread transfer of money from foreign workers to their home countries) flow between sending and receiving countries, while Hecht et al. (2006) [
15] indicated that high remittances are positively correlated with forest recovery. Hence, international tourists and real estate investors created by globalization would affect local economic diversification, such as improving non-farming activities (Stem et al. 2003) [
26], which may lead to more forest cover (Dib et al., 2018) [
27]. Aside from these notions, globalization does some good in spreading sustainable development and ecosystem protection, leading to more aid agencies, international NGOs, researchers, and communities that aim to protect forests across national borders.
However, the impact of globalization on forest growth may vary among different countries or regions. Take the Amazonian forests as an example. Since Amazonian deforestation has reached a historic level (Yanai et al., 2020; Maeda et al., 2021) [
28,
29], the impact of globalization on deforestation is somewhat weak, even imperceptible; thus, the impact of globalization on forest growth in such areas is different than in other regions. Moreover, the characteristics of social structure, political structure, and environmental quality also change the attitudes of governments and individuals to natural environments and forests (Wang et al., 2021b) [
22]; this change may, in turn, affect the impact of globalization on forest growth. Based on such a theoretical analysis, we propose two hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1. Globalization benefits national forest growth.
Hypothesis 2. The impact of globalization on forest growth varies among different countries, and it depends on the social, political, and geographical features of each country.
The potential contributions of this work are as follows. First, contrary to previous literature investigating the relationship between globalization and the environment from the perspective of carbon emissions or ecosystems, we focus on the relationship between globalization and forest growth, which counterbalances the dearth of existing literature, as forests contribute to a significant share of the total environment (Li et al., 2017a) [
21]. Next, previous studies focused on forests often utilize data for one or a few countries to conduct empirical investigations based on static ordinary least squares estimations, which may create biased conclusions (Harper et al., 2007; Van Khuc et al., 2018; Vergara-Asenjo and Potvin, 2014) [
30,
31,
32]. Our study differs insofar as we conduct a system generalized method of moment (GMM) estimation, which allows for the dynamic progress of forest growth based on cross-country data from 108 countries to gain a widely accepted and credible conclusion on the relationship between globalization and forest growth (Li et al., 2017b) [
14]. Hence, with the growth of protectionism, we move a step further to examine whether the increase or decrease in globalization affects forest growth; this is a novel approach not seen in previous studies (Wang et al., 2021b) [
22].
Additionally, we study whether the globalization’s impact on forest growth is consistent among countries with different levels of aging, FDI, industrial share, and air quality, as well as between equatorial countries and non-equatorial countries and emerging markets and non-emerging markets; this approach links globalization to social indicators and better clarifies the relationship between globalization and forest growth in fundamental societies (Aldyan, 2020) [
33]. Finally, we take different political regimes into account, such as democracies, left-wing countries, as well as countries with different levels of freedom or political stability, to comprehensively capture the differences related to globalization’s impact on forest growth (Kull et al., 2007) [
25].
4. Conclusions
Given the growth of protectionism in recent years, this paper attempts to uncover the relationship between globalization and the natural environment from the perspective of forest growth. Our baseline result indicates that globalization promotes the protection of forests. Moreover, social and political globalization cannot change forest growth, while the other three dimensions of globalization benefit it. Furthermore, if the rate of globalization is high, forest growth experiences an increase. In addition, the benefit of FDI in terms of globalization’s positive impact on forest growth is important to consider; a higher aging rate, industrial share, CO2 emissions, and business freedom weaken the influence of globalization on forest growth, and the influence of globalization on forest growth is weaker among emerging markets. Finally, compared to autocracies, democracies are more likely to take advantage of globalization to promote forest growth; similarly, the influence of globalization on forest growth is weaker among countries with higher levels of freedom or lower levels of political instability. However, globalization’s positive impact on forest growth is consistent between left- and right-wing countries.
By reviewing the existing literature, we can firmly argue that this study is the first to investigate the moderating effect of social indicators on globalization’s impact on forests, as well as the first to test whether the influence of globalization on forest growth varies among different political regimes. As such, this study is novel in this field.
Based on our empirical results, we provide the following policy implications for governments to better protect forests. First, it is necessary for policymakers to promote the progress of environmental globalization and continue employing open measures of globalization, such as increasing the import of agriculture products, which can protect national forests through the displacement of deforestation. Second, since cultural globalization can also help governments achieve greater forest growth, governments should make more efforts to spread a worldwide culture that positively affects social development, thus improving awareness about forest growth.
It is worth noting that our results for a moderating effect support the notion that globalization exerts a positive impact on forest growth among countries with a greater FDI. Thus, local governments should carry out feasible policies such as tax incentives or subsidies, as well as measures to protect investors overseas, thus promoting the investment of more capital abroad, which can improve national forests through global activities. In addition, emerging markets reduce the positive role of globalization on forest growth. For emerging markets, while they take the advantage of globalization to spur their economic development, the ecosystem and natural environment should not be ignored. While they attract the overseas investments, regulations of environmental protection or forest growth should be carried out. In some case, governments can refuse investors who engage in activities that cause serious environmental damage.