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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Asian Loggers Target the World's Remaining Rainforests

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

7/13/97

OVERVIEW & SOURCE by EE

Following is a photocopy of an article that somehow slipped through

being sent when it was written in March, 1997. It details the

rampant and widespread acceleration of industrial rainforest logging,

particularly the recent large-scale ventures into most remaining

rainforest wildernesses by Asian timber companies. There is a very

short time window to react to this most recent and ultimately damning

threat to the world's rainforests. Lets get to work.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Title: Cutting and dealing

Asian loggers target the world's remaining rain forests

Source: U.S. News and World Report

Status: Copyrighted, reprint with permission only

Date: 3/10/97

BY TIMOTHY M. ITO AND MARGARET LOFTUS

It wasn't until the Maya villagers in San Jos, Belize, saw the bulldozers

tearing through the jungle a year and a half ago that they discovered the

government had granted a logging concession on their ancestral lands.

Within months, says Juan Sam, he was seeing three daily truckloads of logs

pulling out of the once dense rain forest near the village of Santa Anna

where he'd hunted and fished all his life.

Facing dwindling timber stocks and tighter environmental regulations in

overcut forests at home, an army of Asian timber companies is plunging

into the world's remaining rain forests. Leading the charge overseas are

Malaysian and Indonesian multinationals, some with less than stellar

environmental records. Juan Sam's new neighbors were loggers from a

Malaysian firm, Atlantic Industries; other Asian firms are aggressively

targeting other spots in Central America, the Congo Basin, and the South

Pacific.

What sets these multinationals apart from others that have staged forays

into the rain forests in the past is the sheer scale of their operations.

In Papua New Guinea, Malaysia's largest logger, Rimbunan Hijau, now

controls at least 60 percent of the government's 21.5 million-acre

forestry concession area through more than 20 subsidiaries. In Guyana, the

Barama Co. (a joint venture between Malaysian logging giant Samling

Strategic Corp. and Korean trading company Sunkyong Ltd.) cuts on a

concession slightly larger than the state of Connecticut, about 4.2

million acres. All told, Asian firms have already snapped up an estimated

30 million acres (of the 1.38 billion-acre total) in the Amazon Basin.

The problem, say forestry experts, isn't that logging in tropical forests

is inherently bad. But these firms are given such leeway that they often

neglect the most elementary principles of sustainable forestry. Basics

like mapping trees to be cut, building roads with as little disruption to

the forest as possible, and felling trees into gaps in the canopy are

routinely ignored by the Asian firms, say foresters who have studied their

practices. "None of them are doing what they should," says Nigel Sizer of

the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C.

In Belize, the local Audubon Society claimed that Atlantic Industries was

illegally cutting down protected sapodillas--the "chicle" trees once

harvested heavily for their sap, a substitute for rubber and later the

main ingredient in chewing gum. The group also charged the loggers had cut

within a 20-meter restricted zone along streams, which can cause massive

erosion of banks. Atlantic Industries denies felling any protected trees,

but a 2-mile hike into its timber-felling operation near Santa Anna

reveals stacks of logs, including sapodillas, piled next to bulldozed

tracks. The logs, some 200 years old, were left to rot last season by

loggers in their hasty retreat at the onset of the rains.

Just one season's felling has taken a toll. The jungle here was once lush

and shady, says one Maya leader, Julian Cho; villagers had to use machetes

to clear a path through underbrush and saw grass. Today, bulldozed tracks

of red clay guide visitors into a sunnier and sparser place--evidence that

here the Malaysians have almost free rein. Hunting, a way of life for the

Mayas who inhabit nearby villages, has become more difficult because the

noise of the machinery forces wildlife deeper into the bush. And villagers

from Canejo, about 10 miles downstream, were without drinking water last

year when logging operations near streams filled the headwaters of the

Temash River with mud.

Logging violations are frequent, local villagers say, not only because

there are so few government monitors but also because some firms disguise

the size of the lands they actually control. Maya villagers and other

concession holders say that Atlantic Industries, for example, logs and

controls several areas outside of its own 24,000-acre lease, including a

159,000-acre neighboring concession and at least two other large plots of

land that total 30,000 acres. And unlike its own concession--which does

have a nominal forestry-management plan--none of these other plots are

even subject to government guidelines for cutting.

Sweetheart deal. Asian loggers are hardly unique in disregarding sound

environmental practices. But they have been particularly aggressive in

moving into some of the world's poorest countries with the most lax

enforcement of environmental regulations--and in cutting cozy deals with

the government agencies that hand out logging concessions. Many of the

agreements between countries like Belize and firms like Atlantic

Industries are consummated in private--and, at least in Atlantic

Industries' case, over the objections of local experts who reviewed the

proposed contracts. In 1995, the company approached Belize's forestry

department with a proposal to log in the uncut rain forest of the

country's southern Toledo district. A February 1995 report by the

government's technical forestry consultant was highly critical: "It

clearly lacks professional preparation and analysis," wrote Neil Bird, the

consultant. "It is not something one would expect from an investor who is

preparing to invest $3.5 million [$1.8 million U.S.] in a timber

operation. ... I have serious doubts about the credibility of this

company."

Yet despite that unfavorable recommendation--and warnings from the

forestry department--the transaction was pushed through in April 1995.

Atlantic's manager in Belize, Wong Sing Ling, admits that his company

operations, which also include a huge local sawmill, cannot be profitable

logging in just the restricted reserve area but says his firm's actions

have been entirely proper. Taking a break from an employee volleyball game

at the company mill one drizzly afternoon, the mild-mannered Malaysian

says that Belize reminds him a lot of home. He says he can't understand

what the uproar is all about, his voice rising above the din of bulldozers

in the background. However, Wong would not address questions about the

relationship of Atlantic Industries with other license holders in the

Toledo district.

In other parts of the world, Asian logging companies have drawn fierce

criticism for their sharp business practices. In July 1994, for example,

Tony C.T. Yeong, an executive from a Malaysian multinational, the Berjaya

Group, was expelled from the Solomon Islands for allegedly attempting to

bribe the country's minister of commerce. Press accounts at the time

reported that Yeong--who claimed the money was a gift--had offered the

official about $3,000 to help further the company's takeover plans of a

local logging company. When contacted about the matter, Berjaya officials

insisted that it "never gave [Yeong] any authority to negotiate deals in

this manner." Yeong has since resigned, and Berjaya pulled out of the

Solomons.

Guyana's commissioner of forests, Clayton Hall, says bribes are simply a

way of life for the logging companies. "They come in and believe they can

pay off Third World officials," says Hall, who oversees the Barama

concession and two other major Asian timber company leases. He says that

he is offered a bribe nearly every day he is on the job. Of course, Hall

says, he never accepts it.

Some of the Asian companies have also been adept at shell games that have

allowed them to evade local scrutiny and taxation. In 1992, 20 Malaysian

timber companies were forced to pay large back taxes in their own country

on income they had previously stashed away in shell companies in loosely

regulated places like the British Virgin Islands or Hong Kong.

Nobody loves a logger. The companies and their supporters complain that

they are simply easy targets for criticism. "Anybody who attains any sort

of high profile immediately becomes the whipping boy of environmentalists.

And these Asian companies are now the whipping boys," says Robert Waffle,

staff vice president of government and environmental affairs at the

International Wood Products Association. Wong Kieyik, a manager at WTK

Group, says his company, which is just in the process of applying for a

741,000-acre timber concession in Brazil, has already come under fire from

environmental groups, though "we haven't even cut down a single leaf yet."

The Barama Co. says it is sensitive to environmental concerns and has even

hired an environmental group, the Edinburgh Center for Tropical Forests,

to monitor its forestry-management practices.

Back in Belize, the roar of the bulldozers and the whir of the chainsaws

continue unabated. Local forestry experts say that the irresponsible

cutting practices are already doing irreparable harm to the rain forest.

In 20 years, predicts soil scientist Charles Wright, there could be a

regrowth of secondary trees--maybe even a canopy--but the richness of the

forest will be lost. Ironically, Asian firms like Atlantic Industries may

be unnecessarily doing away with the very resource that sustains them.

Company officials insist they are logging in Belize for the long run. But

if there is little left to log, the only choice Atlantic Industries may

have is to move on--move on, perhaps, to the next poor, developing

country.

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