A RECENT logging ban in China is having an unexpected knock-on effect. To
meet its insatiable hunger for timber, the country has become the world’s second
largest importer of wood, a development that could sound the death knell for the
forests of South-East Asia.
China banned logging in virgin forests after massive floods on the Yangtze in
1998. Scientists convinced the government that logging in the headwaters of the
river, the third largest in the world, contributed to flash floods that burst
the river’s banks and caused billions of dollars’ worth of damage.
But government figures obtained last month by the China office of the World
Wide Fund for Nature reveal that China has now come from nowhere to being a
bigger importer of timber than Japan. Over the past 30 years, Japan has
systematically destroyed the rainforests of the Philippines and much of Borneo.
Now environmentalists fear China will chop down the rest.
Advertisement
“Before the logging ban, China imported around 4 million cubic metres of
timber a year,” says Zhu Chunquang, WWF’s forest programmes officer in Beijing.
“In 1999, the first year after the ban, the figure rose to 10 million and we
have just heard that the figure for 2000 was approaching 15 million.”
China is buying hardwoods from the rainforests of Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua
New Guinea and the African state of Gabon
(see Graphic), and softwoods such as
spruce and fir from Siberia. It is now the world’s second biggest timber
importer, after the US. “Chinese timber companies are setting up abroad,” says
Zhu. “They are renting large areas of forests in Sabah, Borneo, and setting up
pulp mills. They are even investing in New Zealand and Brazil.”
The official import statistics may be an underestimate, says Anatoly
Schvidenko, Russian forestry specialist at the International Institute for
Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria. “The logging ban in China has
created a major black market for illegal harvesting in the Siberia forests of
Irkutsk and Tomsk,” he told 91av. There are also reports of a
cross-border timber trade with China’s southern neighbours, including Burma.FIG-mg22802101.JPG
The ban has proved very effective. “Until two years ago, outsiders were
banned from many roads in northern Sichuan because they were used exclusively
for logging vehicles,” says Chen Youping, a local forestry official. Apart from
a few bicycles and buses, the roads are now empty.