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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
WWF Reports Asian Loggers Latest Threats to Brazil's Rainforest
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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
2/4/96
OVERVIEW & SOURCE by EE
Continuing recent scrutiny of a major increase in potential large scale
industrial forestry in the Amazon, the World Wide Fund for Nature reports
on Asia's biggest logging companies plans to deforest the Amazon region.
Large scale industrial forestry as practiced by a handful of Asian timber
companies is _THE_ major threat to tropical rainforests and their
tremendous biodiversity and ecosystem function. Failure to stop a repeat
of Borneo's (Sarawak) wholesale forest clearing in the South Pacific,
Africa and the Amazon will mean leaving a much diminished world to our
children. This article is copyrighted (and thus the standard disclaimer
that list recipients must contact the source if they want to republish
holds) and comes from WWF's home page at:
http://www.panda.org/news/features/9-96/story5.htm
Glen Barry
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Asian loggers latest threat to Brazil's rainforest
By Annic Johnson
September 1996
Copyright 1996, The World Wide Fund For Nature
Some of Asia's biggest logging companies with massive financial muscle have
penetrated the Brazilian Amazon raising fears of imminent deforestation.
Even before their arrival, the Brazilian authorities had yet to prove they
could police their own backyard.
Sao Paulo: Voracious Asian logging companies with a history of
environmental destruction have gained a foothold in the Brazilian
Amazon, fuelling fears that deforestation might be about to enter a new,
more devastating phase.
The Brazilian government says it has detected three acquisitions of
bankrupt, local companies by Asian multinationals and other deals have been
known to be under negotiation. The government vows it will not allow a
repeat in the Amazon of the kind of destruction wreaked elsewhere.
But environmentalists say Brazil, despite recently introducing new, tighter
controls on logging, has yet to prove it can force the notoriously
negligent Amazon timber trade to observe the law. The arrival of the
multinationals, with more financial and technical muscle than their
Brazilian counterparts, is a decisive test of Brazil's forestry policy.
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, of which logging is a major
contributing factor, actually sped up after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio,
reaching 14,896 square km in 1994, compared with 11,130 square km in 1991.
"The problem is lack of enforcement. Just changing legislation without a
systematic and comprehensive strategy will not work," said Garo Batmanian,
executive director of the World Wide Fund for Nature in Brazil.
The Brazilian government says the three Asian logging companies now present
in the Brazilian Amazon are: WTK Group and Samling Organization, both of
Malaysia, and China's Fortune Timber. Officials say a small amount of
timber has already been felled.
WTK and Samling established themselves as forces in the world timber trade
through massive logging concessions in the Sarawak region of Malaysia,
where indiscriminate forestry techniques have decimated what used to be
virgin jungle.
Like other Far Eastern timber giants, they looked abroad to expand their
businesses. Both have concessions in Cambodia, where King Norodom Sihanouk
has led a chorus of criticism of the destruction of the environment and the
ways of life of indigenous groups by the logging industry there.
Changes in government policy in the Far East, along with the dwindling of
the region's forests, has focused the attention of Asian loggers further
afield, to Africa, Central America and inevitably, to the Amazon, the
world's largest rainforest and home to a third of the planet's tropical
timber.
Firms from Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea have already negotiated
generous logging concessions from the governments of Guyana and Suriname on
Brazil's northern border. The World Resources Institute warned recently
that concessions offered by Suriname to Malaysian and Indonesian loggers
could bring about social and environmental upheaval, while costing the tiny
nation tens of millions of dollars in annual revenues given away as tax
incentives.
Environmentalists say it was only a matter of time before the Asians turned
their sights on the vast forests of Brazil.
In August, WTK was finalising the paperwork involved in its purchase of
300,000 hectares of forest in a remote region of the Amazon on the Jurua
River. The land lies in Amazonas state which has so far been spared the
intense logging that has destroyed large areas of neighbouring Para.
WTK also purchased this year a sawmill in the city of Manaus and is
currently doubling output to 2,000 cubic meters a month. Richard Bruce, who
has spent 25 years drawing up forest management plans for firms seeking
logging permits, was hired by WTK to produce a plan for Jurua.
"All the attention that the Asian companies have been getting means there's
going to be a lot of people watching their every move," Bruce said, adding
that at 28 cubic meters per hectare, WTK's plans for Jurua are modest.
But management plans, which set down how a company intends to harvest its
concessions, commonly turn out to be worth less than the paper they are
printed on. Timber is often felled illegally on Indian lands, and not from
the concession areas stipulated in the permits, and some types of more
controlled woods, like expensive mahogany, are passed off as other species.
A report, commissioned this year by the Brazilian government, surveyed 34
logging companies in and around Paragominas, the biggest timber center of
the Amazon. Not one met the requirements of the International Tropical
Timber Organization by which Brazil has promised it will comply by 2000.
"It would not be an exaggeration to state that the timber industry in the
Paragominas region is purely extractive: there is no management of any
sort," the report declared.
The study highlighted the short-term outlook of the owners of the logging
companies in Paragominas. One company official was quoted as saying he
thought the concept of sustainable logging was "a farce" because "in 30
years I won't be here any more."
But a WWF-funded project in Paragominas proves sustainable logging,
harvesting and sawing is economically viable. In 1993, half a 200-hectare
research area was logged using traditional methods while the rest was
harvested by drawing up a forest inventory, selecting the most suitable
logs and felling them with the least possible damage to nearby trees.
The project showed management cuts waste by half and encouraged faster
regeneration of logged areas, reducing by up to 50 percent the time needed
for a second harvest. Most important, the new methods produced a profit
margin 13 percent higher than traditional logging. Research has now been
extended to 30 logging projects across the Amazon.
But the industry sticks to its old ways. Many logging companies are near
bankrupt and say they cannot afford to invest in management techniques.
Others simply do not see the need, with forests stretching over an area
still the size of Western Europe and the government unable to enforce its
laws.
The prospect of the Asian loggers setting up operations with the industry
in such a precarious state has put the government on alert. "The investment
of hundreds of millions of dollars in the Amazonian logging industry could
be disastrous given the conditions we operate in," IBAMA (National
Institute for Environment) president Eduardo Martins said.
Martins said all timber produced by the Asian logging companies would be
inspected to make sure it complied with the terms of their logging permits.
Likewise, all logging permits in the Amazon are being reviewed and a
crackdown on corruption within IBAMA is under way.
But environmental groups remained unconvinced the government has the means
to prevent the kind of damage that has obliterated many of the world's
forests where major loggers have been active.
"We know the Asians have a bad track record on sustainable logging and
we're concerned the same thing doesn't happen here,"said Batmanian of the
WWF. "But the Malaysians are going to be no worse than the Brazilians if
the government doesn't enforce the law."
*Annic Johnson is a British journalist based in Brazil
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