Asian Logging Giants Extend Reach into Rainforests of World

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

8/19/96

OVERVIEW & SOURCE by EE

Following is major coverage of the issue we and others have been trumpeting

for half a decade--that Asian style industrial forestry threatens the very

existence of virtually all rainforests worldwide. A major, worldwide

reaction is needed to place the last intact rainforests off limits to

industrial forestry development. Following is a photocopy of an Associated

Press article which makes use of much of the information we have recently

networked. Much more information can be found at < http://forests.org/ >.

Glen Barry

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Asian logging giants extend reach

Rainforests are major targets

August 18, 1996

KUCHING, Malaysia (AP) -- Flush with expertise and profits from felling

local rainforests, Asian logging companies have begun stripping millions of

acres of timberland around the world.

Their reach extends from South Pacific islands to pristine forests in Latin

America and Africa. According to an Associated Press survey, their

operations are accelerating -- as is the opposition they face from

indigenous people and environmentalists.

With Malaysians and Indonesians at the forefront, Asian companies started

moving out in the mid-1980s. They now dominate rainforest logging

worldwide.

Some of their concessions are already the size of small countries, and

their sights are set on such riches as Brazil's Amazon forests.

"What we are witnessing today is a relatively new trend of 'South-South

colonialism,' whereby southern transnational companies are making heavy

investments in other 'more backward' Third World countries," said Marcus

Colchester of the Britain-based World Rainforest Movement.

Along with investments, the companies transfer the political patronage

systems, corruption and poor environmental practices of their own

societies, he said.

Companies contacted insist they are practicing sustainable logging that

will not destroy forests. They project themselves as entrepreneurs from

dynamic economies that less developed nations should emulate.

But in a clash that appears to leave little middle ground, conservationists

charge that many loggers operate like "robber barons," depleting an

ecologically important resource at unconscionable rates and violating

native rights.

"That's not to say there aren't bad European and American companies, but

Asians are the worst," said Jean-Paul Jeanreneaud of the Switzerland- based

World Wide Fund for Nature. "They are more cavalier, less concerned about

environmental and social issues. And they're all over the place."

A study financed by the World Bank and the United Nations warned in early

August that logging is endangering half of the world's remaining 5

billion acres of tropical forest. It said the rest is threatened by slash-

and-burn farming techniques used by primitive peoples.

Among recent findings by Associated Press reporters in Latin America, Asia

and Africa:

-- The next major targets for Asian loggers are the Amazon, probably the

world's top timber source in the coming decade, and Africa, where European

logging companies have tended to dominate.

Major players are WTK Group, Samling, Rimbunan Hijau and Mingo of Malaysia

and Fortune Timber of Taiwan. On the doorstep are several companies from

China.

Asian companies have bought 8.6 million acres in the Brazilian Amazon.

Purchases over the next two years could reach 22.2 million acres, or about

15 percent of the harvestable forest.

"By the end of next year, the Amazon lumber industry will have a new face -

- an Asian one," said Francisco Coelho, president of the Amazonas State

Sawyers Syndicate.

Coelho very much favors the Asian invasion, as do most Amazon loggers, who

are competing to sell land and sawmills to the newcomers. Regional demand

for lumber has sagged, and the Asians represent money and jobs.

Brazil's president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, is trying to put the brakes

on. In late July, he decreed a two-year suspension for awarding new

logging concessions for mahogany and other rare hardwoods. He also said

current concessions would be revoked for any companies that do practice

sustainable logging.

-- In Guyana, a Malaysian-South Korean venture, Barama Co., has been

granted a concession half the size of Belgium. Neighboring Suriname says it

hopes to hand out a similar parcel to Berjaya Group of Malaysia.

'Easy victims'

The World Wide Fund for Nature says the two economically struggling South

American countries have become "easy victims" of loggers moving into

some of the world's most unspoiled forests.

The Berjaya concession is bound by stringent rules restricting cutting to

55 percent of trees and forbidding logging within 4 1/2 miles of tribal

villages. But Suriname officials admit they have been unable to police a

150,000- acre concession where they say Indonesia's MUSA company is

violating its agreement by clear cutting vast stands and felling more trees

than allowed.

Flying over the MUSA concession, an AP reporter saw acres of scarred, red

earth hewn out of a jungle thick with towering trees draped with

lianas and orchids. On the ground, tribesmen said the squawk of parrots has

been replaced by the whine of saws.

-- In the Solomon Islands of the South Pacific, which are predicted to be

denuded within a decade, public outrage was ignited last year by the

revelation that bribes were paid to seven government ministers by Malaysian

logging firms.

On one of the islands, Pavuvu, disputes between landowners and a pro-

logging government led to the murder last year of a community leader and

the burning of bulldozers owned by Maving Brothers, a Malaysian company

that has already logged half of Pavuvu.

-- Closer to home, Cambodia has sold off virtually all its forests, outside

of reserves. Indonesia's Macro-Panin acquired a 3.4 million-acre concession

and Samling snapped up 1.9 million acres. Companies from Thailand, which

has ravaged its own forests, also are big players -- legal and illegal

-- in Cambodia as well in Burma and Laos.

'Accountable to nobody'

Lafcadio Cortesi, a researcher for the environmental group Greenpeace, said

Malaysian firms -- mainly subsidiaries of Rimbunan Hijau -- are wreaking

havoc on Papua New Guinea, which has the largest rainforest cover in the

Asia-Pacific region.

He said they violate established conservation practices by cutting on

slopes of more than 30 degrees, which causes soil erosion, and within 50

yards of streams, which pollutes the waterways. They also have illegally

exported timber and bulldozed sacred sites, he charged.

"The companies are accountable to nobody. They are basically breaking every

law in the book and the government is turning a blind eye," Cortesi said.

A Rimbunan Hijau executive, Francis Tiong, called the allegations "typical

of the misinformation and exaggeration that people of their kind have been

using for years." Tiong said his company obeys local laws and its

operations are monitored by the authorities.

"After paying our taxes, levies and royalty to the state, forestry

companies like ours also contribute to the local land owner community by

building roads, air strips, bridges and providing health care," he said.

In Malaysia's Sarawak state, where the major Malaysian loggers are based,

Minister of Environment James Wong Kim Min said in an interview: "So far we

have not heard anything bad (about Malaysian loggers abroad). Of course

they are businessmen, so if they can make a quick buck they will do it. But

they have to preserve good relations and follow laws of the host

government."

Malaysia's official news agency, Bernama, has complained that Malaysian

companies are often lured to other nations with attractive incentives

only to find agreements not honored, sudden taxes imposed and their

reputations tarnished by non- governmental organizations.

"One can imagine the complications the loggers have to encounter when they

have to deal with no less than 800 different tribes in Papua New Guinea,"

it wrote earlier this year.

But environmental groups describe a far different scenario: Many Asian

companies gain foot-holds through hostile takeovers or by buying

concessions from locals. Often cemented by bribes, they form alliances with

the elites that enable them to skirt laws, win virtually every legal case

brought against them and sometimes affect national

legislation.

Dire consequences

The investment that outsiders bring is at least initially welcomed by host

governments and local business partners. But the consequences for

rainforest inhabitants can be dire.

The tribal peoples of Papua New Guinea's East Sepik Province protest the

befouling of their streams by uncontrolled logging. The Indians of

Guyana say loggers have bulldozed their crops. Melanesians in the South

Pacific charge that their traditional land has been swindled from them and

turned into "logging fields." Asian companies are involved in every case.

The expansion of Asian loggers occurred as world prices for tropical

hardwoods like mahogany and teak as much as tripled. Traditional suppliers,

including Nigeria and Ghana, had logged themselves out of the market,

creating shortages.

Seeing the day their own forests would be exhausted and faced by growing

restrictions at home, Asian logging companies moved farther afield in

search of less stringent regulations. These companies are now working in

about 20 countries, and the expansion is far from over.

Some of the biggest are run from Kuching, capital of Sarawak state, a

onetime backwater on the island of Borneo now studded with high-rise hotels

and gleaming government buildings erected largely from timber profits.

Companies like Samling and Rimbunan Hijau were able to take off via

lucrative and extensive concessions on their homeground, site of one of

the world's oldest rainforests.

Much criticized by conservationists, the powerful, government-backed

loggers came into conflict with Penans, Ibans and other Sarawak ethnic

groups and in almost every case won out.

"They're practicing the same system in other countries now," said Harrison

Ngau, a leading environmental activist in Sarawak and former

member of Parliament. "If they do what they have done to us, then we feel

very sorry."

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