China at the centre of global illegal timber trade, NGO says
China’s insatiable appetite for timber is driving an illegal trade in Asian and African forests that is fuelling conflict, an environmental group said on Thursday.
China’s insatiable appetite for timber is driving a growing illegal trade that is stripping forests in Africa and Asia and fuelling conflict, underscoring the urgency for Beijing to enact laws to crack down, an environmental group said on Thursday.
China is the world’s top importer of illegal timber, with the trade worth about US$4 billion a year, said the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).
Globally, Interpol estimates total trade in illegal timber is more than US$30 billion.
The EIA released its report, “Appetite for Destruction: China’s Trade in Illegal Timber”, in Beijing to highlight what it said was China’s lack of action, in contrast to major trading partners such as the United States.
“China has built a vast wood-processing industry, reliant on imports for most of its raw materials supply. It is in effect exporting deforestation,” the group said in the report.
It said China’s state-owned companies played a major role in securing supplies from overseas. An EIA analysis of China’s trade data for 2007 showed state-owned firms imported nearly half the volume of tropical logs that year.
