China's growing economy may fuel illegal timber trade
China's growing economy may fuel illegal timber trade
Rendi A. Witular, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta
A booming economy has not only made China thirsty for oil and minerals but also forestry products, which could be fueling the illegal trade of the commodity from Indonesia, according to a non-governmental organization.
Director of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) David Kaimowitz said China's astonishing economic growth had threatened the sustainability of the Indonesian forests as Indonesian exporters were racing to tap market opportunities in China.
"An increase in China's imports of forest products has not only created an opportunity, but also a problem. It has greatly increased the pressure on most Indonesian forests," said Kaimowitz.
A joint study conducted by CIFOR, Forest Trends and the Chinese Center for Agricultural policy shows that between 1997 and 2002, Chinese imports of forest products rose by 75 percent from US$6.4 billion to $11.2 billion.
Preliminary figures suggest the imports reached almost $13 billion in 2003. By 2002, the country was importing the equivalent of 96 million cubic meters of wood, or about one and a half times Indonesia's total annual timber harvest, the study said.
"We just can imagine how sensitive it is to try to solve these problems when a lot of the products are illegal. The business has involved many jobs with the economy also depending on it," said Kaimowitz.
According to the study, the majority of Chinese forest product imports come from Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Canada. Indonesia, Russia and Canada account for over 60 percent of the pulp and paper imports, while Indonesia is the largest source of plywood and lumber products for the world's most populous country.
As the Chinese become richer, they build additional houses and buy more books and newspapers. And the nation has also become a major exporter of finished wood-based products such as furniture.
The country manages to keep more jobs at home by importing raw materials and doing the processing themselves; importing more logs and less plywood, and purchasing pulp rather than paper.
Meanwhile, China has made several moves to protect its own forests by putting a halt to most logging in many areas and closing down thousands of small factories and mills, resulting in the skyrocketing importation of timber, lumber and pulp.
The country of 1.3 billion people ideally would like to get most of its forest products from its own reforestation plantations in the future. However, it remains unclear when that will it happen.
"It will need a bilateral talk to solve this problem. We are hoping that in the next Asian Forest Partnership (AFP) meeting, Indonesia and China will have a common understanding to solve it," said Kaimowitz.