Merbau timber from Indonesia stored at the Yuzhou Wood Market on the banks of the River Pearl, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China.
The developed industrial economies of North America, Europe,
Japan and South Korea are timber gluttons and consume more timber
than the planet can sustainably provide. That's the bad news. The
worse news is that the timber over consumption habit is beginning
to rub off on the emerging mega-economy of China.
A report recently released by Greenpeace called '
Sharing the Blame' shows that in the past 10 years, timber
imports into China have increased by an enormous 4.5 fold to the
double Mt. Everest sized pile mentioned above. This huge volume of
extra timber isn't all being consumed in China however, with
exports of timber products from China increasing by 3.5 fold in the
same time period.
Whilst demand for timber products has risen sharply in China,
the demand in the world's big industrial economies has remained at
an all time high. China has become the clearinghouse for the
world's timber with every second tropical tree traded in the world
being sent to China. Unfortunately, much of the merchandise is
stolen goods.
The forest is felled in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, where
between 76 to 90 percent of the logging is illegal, and shipped to
China to be processed into plywood, furniture or paper and exported
to the forest hungry economies of North America, Europe, Japan and
South Korea.
'
Sharing the Blame' isn't only about the frightening statistics
of the global timber trade; it follows the illegally logged timber
from the forest to the finished product in the shops and names the
companies behind the illicit trade.
After being contacted by Greenpeace and presented with the
evidence, some international timber buyers have already started to
address the issue of purchasing timber products made from illegal
logging. Numerous companies in Europe have made commitments to stop
purchasing Chinese plywood made from illegally logged timber from
Papua New Guinea.
The Chinese government has also started to publicly acknowledge
that consumption issues must be tackled in China. In recognition of
this problem, in late March of this year, the government imposed a
5 percent consumption tax on disposable chopsticks and hardwood
flooring to try to stem the tide of forest destruction.
Whilst this is a good start, the fact that so many companies
internationally have been purchasing illegal timber products
without knowing or caring shows that governments of the world have
to get tough with the illegal logging trade and ban imports of
illegal timber products.
The responsibility for ending the over-exploitation of the
world's last forests is shared equally between the producer and the
consumer countries. The developed industrial economies of North
America, Europe, Japan and South Korea need to dramatically reduce
their consumption of timber products and China needs to find a way
to develop its economy without simply following the poor example of
the timber gluttons.
After all the numbers are added up and put into neat rows and
columns of figures, it is easy to forget that what isn't shown in
the statistics are lives; people's lives and the lives of the
plants and animals of the forests. And if you put everything back
together, all the pieces combine to equal a couple of Mt. Everests
of ancient forest disappearing before our eyes.
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