When cheap timber equals a lost forest

Logging companies and corrupt governments profit from logging. We profit by buying the cheap timber products made from Paradise Forest timber.

Time to share the blame

China's timber furniture industry is thriving. Between 1996 and 2006, China's timber imports increased by 4.5 fold. Nearly all trees logged in Papua New Guinea end up in China. Huge volumes of timber are processed into cheap furniture, flooring and plywood. Many of these products are exported and sold to people in developed countries, like Australia, North America, Europe and Japan.

Australia is one of China's major exporting countries. In 2004, the total export value of China's wooden furniture to Australia was over $200 million. Australians who buy "Made in China" wooden furniture play a role in destroying the world's last ancient forests. We share the blame for climate change by buying timber that once stood as vast carbon-trapping tracts of forest.

Read the report Sharing the Blame

What logging costs a community

Brian Baring, 26 (pictured below with Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior), grew up in a traditional village in Papua New Guinea as one of the Gingilang clan, of the Borong tribe. He has seen his forest destroyed by foreign logging companies.

"My uncle got a job with the logging company, thinking that he could make some money so he could send his kids to school. But he had to think again. They paid him so badly that he threw their money back at them and told them to pay him properly. Many of the girls who work in the camps, doing laundry and cooking for the Malaysian loggers, fall pregnant by the foreign workers before they are abandoned with their babies. In the village culture, this brings shame to those girls and the family. Lives are ruined before they have begun.

"When a company comes in they are supposed to provide infrastructure such as roads with bridges or culverts to protect our water sources … In our area the Malaysian company was supposed to put in a water supply for 14 villages but this has never happened."

Read Brian's full story