The Role of Forestry-Based Policies in Alleviating Relative Poverty in the Rocky Desertification Area in Southwest China

China has put forward a series of forestry-based poverty alleviation policies, aiming to alleviate poverty and improve the livelihoods of rural households, especially in backward and ecologically fragile areas with rich forest resources. Based on field survey data, we used an empirical analysis method to investigate the role of forestry-based policies in alleviating the relative poverty of rural households in the rocky desertification area in southwest China. The Logit regression results demonstrate that forestry-based poverty alleviation policies are significant at alleviating the relative poverty of rural households, and there are differences in the degree and significance of the impact of various forestry-based poverty alleviation policies. In particular, the forestry industry support (FIS) policy, the ecological forest rangers (EFRs) policy, and the Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP) can significantly decrease the incidence of relative poverty of rural households, while the effect of the Public Benefit Forest Compensation Program (PBFC) on decreasing the incidence of relative poverty is not significant. The findings contribute to a better understanding of the role and effectiveness of China's forestry-based poverty alleviation policies, and can provide a reference for optimizing the forestry poverty alleviation policies for the specific area and even the whole nation, as well as provide experience for worldwide poverty alleviation by forestry.