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Imperilled Riches |
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Logging is one of the best known causes of rainforest destruction. Despite improved logging techniques and greater international awareness and concern for the rainforests, unsustainable logging of tropical rainforests appears to be increasing. Logging firms, particularly Malaysian, Indonesian, and Korean multinational corporations, are rapidly moving into some of the last remaining undisturbed forest areas in northeastern South America (Guyana, Suriname), in addition to stepping up their practices in the Brazilian Amazon, where 30 million acres (12 million ha) were under concession in 1996; the Congo Basin; the South Pacific, particularly the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea; and Central America. After devastating most of their own stocks, these timber companies are seeking new resource areas in poor, developing countries to keep up with the demand for tropical wood products, like industrial roundwood, chopsticks, furniture, wood chips, decor, and paper pulp. Such companies may use bribes to sway legislators to overlook violations and grant new concessions, sometimes over protests by the people of the nation and those that inhabit the area to be concessioned. In some countries like Indonesia, forest concessions are allocated by a small circle of forestry officials, making corruption and political favoritism temptingly easy. One of the major problems with logging is the limited terms of concessions. Short concessions give little incentive to replant and encourages the cutting of young trees before they reach efficient harvesting age. The result is that when a logging firm pulls out of an operation, the forest stock is heavily decimated and will take years to recover. Although the logging practice can be carried out in a sustainable manner, many developing countries treat their forests as otherwise worthless lands and simply auction off large concessions at below market prices to foreign firms, which carry out their work for maximum immediate economic efficiency and with little regard for the environment. For example, Malaysian and Indonesian firms are notorious for neglecting elementary principles of sustainable forestry and leaving logged lands seriously degraded. Protected tree species are routinely harvested, firms log outside of their concession, and unnecessarily intrusive logging roads are constructed. These tropical logging operations widely fail to safeguard timber stocks for future harvests and fail to protect logged-over forest from fire, biodiversity loss, overhunting, and subsequent conversion for agriculture or pasture. Many companies practice "selective logging" where certain hardwoods, valuable as timber, are cut. However, because of the diversity of tree species in lowland tropical rainforest, no one species dominates and suitable timber trees are widely dispersed. Thus logging roads -- highly destructive on their own -- are built and serve as an invitation for colonists to settle the newly opened tracts of forest. In most diverse rainforests it is simply more profitable for the logging firm to clear cut. Studies by the Environmental Defense Fund show that areas that have been selectively logged are eight times more likely to be settled and cleared by shifting cultivators than untouched rainforests because of access granted by logging roads. Logging roads allow masses of colonists to penetrate virgin rainforest, which they exploit for fuelwood, game, building material, and temporary agricultural lands. In Central Africa, which suffered the most deforestation during the 1980s and continuing to 1995 (FAO), logging roads have rapidly fueled the expansion of the devastating bush meat trade. In satisfying the increasing demand for protein among urban and rural dwellers, endangered primates like Western lowland gorillas, chimpanzees, and monkeys, along with other forest creatures are experiencing regional declines and even extirpations (local extinctions). Studies have also shown that logging to any degree, even if it is highly selective, reduces global biodiversity. Logging roads aside, the logging of selected valuable trees (as usually practiced) is highly degrading to the surrounding rainforest. When a tree falls, it can bring down dozens of surrounding trees which are connected to the target tree by lianas, thus damaging the residual stand of unharvested trees. Additionally, moving the fallen trees usually employs tractors, which tear up the soil and damage ground vegetation, along with exposing soils to the intense tropical sun. This exposure effectively destroys the symbiotic ground organisms necessary for essential soil processes. After logging, erosion increases significantly, reducing the amount of available nutrients and clouding up local creeks and streams. Once the trees of harvestable size are cut, it will be many years, since hardwoods are relatively slow-growing, before trees of harvestable size will develop. In that time, the land is often colonized, burned, or destroyed in some other manner facilitated by the open access granted by the logging roads. Logging . . . Amphetamine Style An Account of Illegal Logging in Thailand Other companies find it more profitable to simply clear all the trees from an area, burning some trees as charcoal and leaving others to rot. An article in the Christian Science Monitor described the horrors of a logging operation in the Congo rainforest:
The author also notes that the company prohibits access to the site of logging operations, because if the media brought pictures to the public, it would make the company look reprehensible. Such media blackout areas are a form of censorship that is sometimes employed by governments sensitive to criticism about their decisions in rainforest use. For example, the Malaysian government prohibited the media from entering zones in Sarawak when the Indigenous Penans and Dyaks put up resistance against commercial loggers, so that the media could not document the actions of the military. Despite their stated goal as paying off their debts, developing countries see only a fraction of the money they deserve for liquidating their forest reserves. For example, foreign corporations can often find or create loopholes in legislation allowing them to purchase concessions for very little and to avoid excise taxes on the logs they remove. For example, the 1994 agreement in Suriname grants the land (25% of Suriname-7.5 million acres) at less than $35 an acre, while a Malaysian logging firm paid about $1 a hectare for timber rights in Belize. There were no provisions in the terms of the Suriname agreement to replant trees or provide environmental protection, and lacked provisions allowing the country to adequately monitor the logging. Additionally the timber contract was full of loopholes which allow timber companies to avoid paying taxes on their take. Estimates from the US Forestry Service and Harvard Law School project that while loggers will make some US$28 million annually, the country will only earn $US2 million. In Cambodia, the government was losing so much revenue from its failure to collect taxes on timber, that the IMF canceled a $120 million loan. The World Bank also acted by suspending direct aid to the government until the corruption in the forestry sector was resolved. In Papua New Guinea, the government failed to enforce an excise tax that would raise the price of timber to $8 per cubic meter Ð a bargain considering the timber companies turn around and sell the same timber to Japan for $160 per cubic meter. Similarly in Nigeria, WEMPCO (a Hong Kong logging firm) reportedly paid US$28 to the government for each mahogany tree while reselling the wood at US$800 per cubic meter, roughly US$2900 per tree. Tropical Hardwood Log Imports into Japan Total Tropical Timber Imports into Japan Logs are routinely exported, especially in Central Africa, before processing, effectively turning more of the profit over to foreign corporations. Actual harvesting, the expensive and often unprofitable part of production, is often left to local firms. These firms have to purchase logging equipment from foreign companies, thus further driving up costs and minimizing profits. Several countries, including Cambodia, the Solomon Islands, and Burma, have banned raw log exports in an effort to increase revenues. Leaders of some developing countries are beginning to realize that they are running out of forest to cut. Revenue (as a percentage of GDP) from forestry is on the decline worldwide, especially in tropical countries. Companies in places like Malaysia, Ivory Coast, and Indonesia have so devastated their forest stocks that they now must go to other regions like New Guinea, Central Africa, and Latin America for timber. The most threatened rainforests are those with the most diversity, the lowland forest, because of their relative accessibility and greater share of hardwoods suitable for timber. The mountain forests and forests located in more rugged regions are still relatively safe from commercial logging. Sustainable forestry is possible, but according to the International Tropical Timber Organization (a UN body), less than 1% of logging in the tropics is truly sustainable. In a recent survey none of 34 sites in the Para state of Brazil had met ITTO harvesting requirements Brazil has agreed to implement by the year 2000. Several techniques like strip logging and reduced impact logging (See Ch 10: Solutions: "sustainable logging") show potential, but do little good if they are not adopted. It is easy to be critical of loggers and multinational timber companies, but they, like other people, are just trying to earn money. A few companies are working to make their operations sustainable, while others, like the Malaysian Timber Council (MTC), are spending to improve their image through marketing. The Asian economic crisis of 1997-1998 slowed commercial logging throughout the region. The higher prices for imported parts coupled with the tightening up of loans and capital dispersal meant that several firms in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea had to scale back operations. Asian demand for timber also took a dive as new construction projects were shelved in austerity measures. Timber-exporting countries around the world, from Gabon to the Solomon Islands, were reeling from the steep decline in Asian log imports and unemployment in the logging sector of these countries was soaring. The decline in prices and demand were much worse for primary forest products (logs, sawnwood) than secondary processed wood products. In Indonesia, there is hope that the IMF plan for Indonesia will attack
some of the close economic ties between political allies of former president Suharto and wealthy plantation owners
and timber barons. The lack of transparency in business transactions has resulted in strange allocation of funds
ear-marked for reforestation projects. For example, according to the IMF, Indonesia was unable to use its special
off-budget reforestation fund to help combat the fires because the money was being used to prop up Suharto's son's
failing car project. In the past the fund has been used primarily to distribute wealth back to Indonesia's circle
of economic elite by offering plump subsidies to commercial timber and plantation firms.
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