China strips Asia's forests to save
its own By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - Even as it wins praise for
increasing its forest cover at home, China is
finding it difficult to erase the scars it is
leaving in forests abroad. The jungles of
Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Myanmar are but
three of the many in this region where the
footprint of Asia's giant is growing steadily
bigger, worrying environmentalists.
Few
green groups expect this paradox to be resolved
soon, more so after Beijing revealed on Monday the
scale at which the Chinese economy had expanded
during the first three months of
this
year. China's gross domestic product (GDP) saw
10.2% growth in the first quarter, President Hu
Jintao said during a televised speech.
"Logging in the forests of Indonesia,
Papua New Guinea and [Myanmar] will continue
because of China's demand," a forestry expert at
the global environmental watchdog Greenpeace said,
interviewed by telephone from Indonesia. "China's
industrial capacity is growing fast, forcing it to
look for more timber supplies."
Forest
plantations will "not be enough to meet China's
increasing needs", said the Greenpeace campaigner,
Hapsoro, who like many Indonesians has only one
name. "The forests in Indonesia and Papua New
Guinea are threatened."
Indonesia, in
fact, is ranked among the worst affected in the
world because of the scale of illegal logging to
meet the demand for timber in Japan, the United
States and the European Union, in addition to
China, Greenpeace revealed last week.
"Indonesia's forests are being destroyed
faster than any on Earth. A forest area the size
of six football fields disappears every minute,"
it said. "In total, Indonesia has already lost
more than 72% of its large intact ancient forest
areas and 40% of its forests have been completely
destroyed."
Yet China is winning laurels
for being among the leaders in the Asia-Pacific
region helping to expand the forested areas in the
world.
"Of the 10 countries in the world
with the largest plantation areas, six are in the
Asia-Pacific region, namely China, India,
Indonesia, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam," stated
the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
"China posted an overall increase in forest area
of more than 9.9 million acres [4 million
hectares] per year between 2000 and 2005."
The increase has been promoted not only by
the logging ban but because the country's
development has reduced the demand for wood as a
fuel.
Such a combined effort has helped
the region record "the highest rate of forest
plantation in the world over the past five years",
the United Nations food agency said on the eve of
a meeting on Asia's forests being held in
Dehradun, India, from Monday to Friday this week.
The spike in forest plantations, noted the FAO,
had resulted in the region witnessing a net gain
of more than 567,000 hectares per year during the
2000-05 period, marking a significant turnaround
from the net loss of 931,000 hectares of forest
per year across Asia and the Pacific region in the
1990s.
But such achievements pale into
insignificance when set against the scale of the
logging flattening the world's forests. It barely
matters given the pace at which natural forests
are being destroyed, said Patrick Durst, the FAO's
senior forestry officer at its Asia-Pacific
regional office.
"While plantation forests
are an extremely valuable resource and will
undoubtedly supply an increasing portion of wood
and fiber needs in the future, they should not be
considered a substitute for the region's dwindling
natural forests," Durst said. "During the past
five years, the region lost more than 14.8 million
acres [6 million hectares] of natural forests."
And there is little disagreement in the
studies done by environmental groups about the
pivotal role China plays to find a balance between
protecting the forests under threat, on the one
hand, and meeting its demand for timber to sustain
its construction boom and manufacture furniture
and paper products, on the other.
"Faced
with an increasing demand for wood and paper
products along with diminishing forest resources,
China imports timber from many areas, including
Russia, Indonesia, South America and Central
Africa," stated the Global Forest and Trade
Network Quarterly, a publication of the World
Wildlife Fund, in its inaugural issue this year.
"These regions have significant problems, such as
illegal logging."
According to the Center
for International Forestry Research, China's
import of round wood (unprocessed logs) is
expected to reach 100 million cubic meters by
2010, a sixfold increase in timber imports over
2002, when it was 16 million cubic meters.
The Asian giant's appetite for foreign
wood arises from its spectacular economic growth
and from a policy shift by Beijing in 1999 to
protect its environment. The Chinese government
banned all logging in its own forests after the
death of more than 4,000 people in 1998 due to
floods linked to heavy deforestation in the
country.
Myanmar, China's immediate
neighbor to its southwest, was soon to fill the
void created by Beijing's ban, followed by
Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, among
others. The timber trade with Myanmar, which is
illegal, is currently estimated to be close to
US$350 million and includes about 1.5 million
cubic meters per year that is transported across
the border, Global Witness, a non-governmental
group, revealed early last month.
"On-site
investigations during February underscored the
need for action - at least 150 loaded log trucks
are crossing the border from [Myanmar] into China
every night," stated Global Witness. "Cross-border
imports [of wood] from [Myanmar] to China
increased by 12% in 2005."
According to
Hapsoro of Greenpeace, the forests of Southeast
Asia will offer early clues if there is a shift
away from the illegal timber trade that China is
profiting from. "It is not so at the moment. The
timber exports from the forests are still
increasing in this region."
