Chinese Loggers Decimate Burma Forests

by Marwaan Macan-Markar

(IPS) BANGKOK -- An army of Chinese loggers has moved into Burma's northern Kachin State, stripping the rugged mountainous area of its timber-rich forests.

Rangoon's military leadership finds itself trapped into silence by the political capital Beijing has spent to protect the Burmese regime from increasing charges of oppression and human rights violations leveled by the international community.

"In 2004, more than 1 million cubic meters of timber, about 95 percent of Burma's total timber exports to China, were illegally exported from northern Burma to (China's southern) Yunnan province," states Global Witness (GW), a non-governmental organization.

"Large parts of forest along the China-Burma border have been destroyed, forcing (Chinese) logging companies to move even deeper into Burma's forests in their search for timber," the London-based environmental lobby revealed here in a new report, "A Choice for China: Ending the destruction of Burma's northern frontier forests."

"This is not smuggling of timber, but it is done out in the open and easy to see," Susan Kempel, assistant campaigner of GW, told reporters. "The trade is completely out of control and keeps rising."

The same trees that are logged in the Burmese territory are protected on the Chinese side. "There are many signs warning against logging trees in China," said Kempel.

Beijing's decision to protect its own environment stems from a 1999 law to ban domestic logging, in particular round wood timber.

The Chinese deforestation in northern Burma -- where an estimated 20,000 loggers from the Yunnan province are involved, according to GW -- also goes against the grain of an international agreement that the Chinese government signed.

In September 2001, Beijing signed the Forest Law Enforcement and Governance (FLEG) agreement at an East Asia ministerial conference in the Indonesian resort island of Bali. A centerpiece of this agreement was for governments to crack down on illegal logging in Asia, stop the illegal timber trade and initiate forest management programs.

But GW does not absolve the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as Rangoon's junta is officially known, and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), an ethnic rebel group active in the area that has put down its arms.

"The destructive logging and illegal timber trade take place with the full knowledge and complicity of the SPDC, the Chinese authorities and ceasefire groups," states the 94-page report.

Rangoon's reluctance to crack down on the logging, even though it violates Burmese law, has to do with the money it brings in. In 2003-04, timber was the SPDC's third most important source of foreign earnings, amounting to $377 million, according to the GW study.

And during the following period, 2004-2005, these earnings had moved up a notch, becoming the SPDC's "second most important source of legal foreign exchange, amounting to $427.81 million and 15 percent of the total," adds the report.

The KIO sees the timber trade in similar light, Jon Buckrell, forest policy coordinator of GW, told IPS. "It says that they tax this trade because it brings in large amount of income, but it is in agreement to stop the trade."

The difficulty in imposing controls in that region of the Southeast Asian country also arises from the lack of laws and their enforcement in the Kachin State, says Col. James Lum Daw, the KIO's deputy chief of foreign affairs. "The KIO cannot impose its own law because it has signed a ceasefire agreement with the SPDC. And there is no law that has come into force since then, so this logging continues."

This has left the Kachin community even more vulnerable, he admitted during an interview. "They have no right to stop this logging even when they know the damage it is causing their environment."

The GW expose comes at a time when the region has been earning praise for leading the way in reversing illegal deforestation trends by establishing large-scale timber plantations for industrial use.

Currently, an estimated 250 million cubic meters of timber is cut in the region annually for industrial purposes like furniture, for paper and pulp. Of that amount, nearly 140 million cubic meters comes from plantation forests, while about 100 million cubic meters comes from natural forests.

In the 1980s, the average deforestation rate in the tropical regions of Asia was an estimated 4 million hectares per year, but that dropped to nearly 2.4 million hectares of deforestation every year during the 1990s.

"The 1990s mark a historic turning point, for the majority of timber was being supplied from the plantations," Masakazu Kashio, forest resources officer at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told IPS. "The Asia-Pacific region has been the champion in creating plantations for timber."

But China's voracious appetite for imported timber from natural forests has continued to threaten that record, with the forests of Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea being part of the supply chain, in addition to the forests in the Kachin State.

And an April 2005 meeting reveals the difficulty in bucking this trend, since, according to the GW report, ministers meeting in Jakarta "failed to reach an agreement to prevent the illegal trade of forestry products from Indonesia to China."