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May 21, 2002-7
Copyright © 2002 Earth Policy Institute
Illegal Logging Threatens Ecological and Economic Stability
Janet Larsen
Extensive floods in Indonesia during early 2002 have killed hundreds
of people, destroyed thousands of homes, damaged thousands of hectares
of rice paddy fields, and inundated Indonesian insurance companies
with flood-related claims. Rampant deforestation, much of it from
illegal logging, has destroyed forests that stabilize soils and
regulate river flow, causing record floods and landslides.
In just 50 years, Indonesia's total forest
cover fell from 162 million hectares to 98 million. Roads and development
fragment over half of the remaining forests. More than 16 million
people depend on fresh water from Indonesia's 15 largest watersheds,
which between 1985 and 1997 lost at least 20 percent of their forest
cover. Loggers have cleared almost all the biologically diverse
lowland tropical forests off Sulawesi, and if current trends continue,
such forests will be gone from Sumatra in 2005 and Kalimantan by
2010.
Domestic wood supply in Indonesia was documented
at 20 million cubic meters in 2000, while demand stood at some 60
million cubic meters. Thus legal supplies of wood fiber fall short
of demand by up to 40 million cubic meters per year. Illegal logging
fills the gap--accounting for almost 70 percent of wood supply.
All told, illegal logging alone has destroyed 10 million hectares
of Indonesia's rich forests, an area the size of Virginia in the
United States.
Indonesia's situation is not unique. The
Philippines once held 16 million hectares of forests but is now
down to less than 700,000 hectares. In this country where illegal
logging runs rampant, forest loss from tree felling and conversion
to agriculture is cited as the cause of flooding, acute water shortages,
rapid soil erosion, river siltation, and mudslides that have taken
lives, destroyed properties, and wreaked environmental damage.
In 1989, Thailand banned the logging of
natural forests in direct response to devastating floods and landslides
that had taken 400 lives the year before. Though illegal logging
is now at lower levels than before the ban, it is still widespread.
More recently, massive flooding of China's Yangtze River in 1998,
which was linked to the removal of 85 percent of the upper river
basin's original tree cover, propelled China to issue a ban on logging
in the upper reaches of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers and to begin
a reforestation campaign.
China consumes nearly 280 million cubic
meters of timber a year, but domestic supply currently provides
only 142 million cubic meters. As production shrinks, China is turning
to imports and illegal logging to make up for the shortfall. The
International Tropical Timber Organization forecasts that within
the next few years China will become the world's largest log importer,
edging out the United States and eclipsing Japan, whose massive
imports have already destroyed many of the rainforests of the Philippines
and much of Borneo.
Fifty-seven percent of the logs brought
into China originate in Russia, where poor law enforcement, corruption,
and the abandonment of local timber-processing plants have led people
to illegally cut trees for companies that send raw materials to
China for processing. At least one-fifth of Russia's timber harvest
is taken illegally or drastically violates existing legislation.
To China's south, Burma (Myanmar) holds
about half of mainland Southeast Asia's forests. These contain a
variety of tropical hardwood species that are increasingly drawing
interest from China. On paper, Burma supplies less than 10 percent
of China's log imports, but industry workers say the numbers must
be at least twice as high. Burmese log exports to China are growing
much faster than the trees, many of which are hundreds of years
old, can be replaced. In 1949, tropical forests covered 21 percent
of the country's land area, but now less than 7 percent of Burma
is forested.
In Laos, where the volume of illegal logging
is the equivalent of at least one sixth of the legal harvest, the
army openly cuts forests. Now less than 40 percent of the country
is forested, down from 70 percent in 1940. In Cambodia, over 70
percent of the timber export volume consists of unreported logs.
And Viet Nam could lose all substantial forest cover by 2020 if
the current rate of deforestation continues.
As the growing Asian timber market has exhausted
supplies over much of the continent, wood imports to Asia from Africa
have steadily increased. From 1993 to 1999, Europe imported 40 percent
of central African logs, but since 1996, rising demand from Asia
has made that region the number one importer of African timber.
Forest products are the second largest export
for both Cameroon and Gabon, generating about 20 percent and 13
percent of respective export revenues. Between 1990 and 1995, the
share of Cameroonian logs going to Asia soared from 7 percent to
50 percent. Unfortunately, only half the logging companies in Cameroon
are licensed, and among these companies, violations such as felling
trees smaller than the legal size and cutting outside concession
boundaries are common.
These examples cover only a portion of the
global timber market. Uncontrolled deforestation abounds in other
countries--in Brazil, with the world's highest deforestation rate,
where an estimated 80 percent of logging is illegal; in Mexico,
which is losing over 1 million hectares each year; and in Ethiopia,
where in just 40 years forest cover has plummeted from around 40
million hectares to 2.7 million, only half of which is natural forest.
Rarely, though, is deforestation purely a local issue.
The world's eight largest industrial countries
plus the rest of the European Union buy 280 million cubic meters
of timber and timber products from abroad each year, accounting
for 74 percent of the world's timber imports. Most of this wood
comes from countries where illegal tree felling is the norm. In
2000, the United States alone imported over $450 million worth of
timber from Indonesia, which given Indonesia's illegal logging rate
could represent $330 million worth of timber from illegal sources.
If importing countries insist that timber
and timber products are certified under internationally recognized
environmental and social standards like those of the Forest Stewardship
Council, illegal logging becomes more difficult. Exporting countries
would profit by protecting the integrity of forest ecosystems, and
could secure higher prices for certified wood on international markets.
Russia, for instance, which loses $1 billion in export revenues
each year because its wood is not certified, is now developing a
mandatory certification system for standing forests.
Certification along with existing international
agreements, such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, can help to prevent illegal logs
from crossing international borders--if laws and standards are upheld.
Recycling and reduced use of throwaway timber products can lower
the demand for timber that has made illegal logging profitable.
As the Chinese government has recognized, the services that forests
provide, such as flood control, can be worth far more than the lumber
they contain.
Copyright
© 2002 Earth Policy Institute
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FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
From Earth Policy Institute
Lester R. Brown, Eco-Economy:
Building an Economy for the Earth (New York: W.W. Norton
& Company, 2001).
From Other Sources
Dave Currey et al., Timber Trafficking: Illegal
Logging in Indonesia, South East Asia and International Consumption
of Illegally Sourced Timber (London: Emerson Press, Environmental
Investigation Agency and Telapak Indonesia, September 2001).
FWI/GFW, The
State of the Forest: Indonesia (Bogor, Indonesia: Forest
Watch Indonesia, and Washington, DC: Global Forest Watch, 2002.
Susan Minnemeyer, An
Analysis of Access Into Central Africa's Rainforests(Washington, DC: Global Forest Watch and World Resources Institute,
2002).
LINKS
Center for International Trade in Forest Products
http:/www.cintrafor.org
Forest Stewardship Council
http:/www.fsc.org/en/
Forest Trends
http:/www.forest-trends.org
Global Forest Watch
http:/www.globalforestwatch.org
International Tropical Timber Organization
http:/www.itto.or.jp
UN Food and Agriculture Organization Forest Resources
Assessment
http:/www.fao.org/forestry/fo/fra
US Department of Agriculture Forest and Fishery
Products Division
http:/www.fas.usda.gov/
ffpd/fpd.html
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