--------------------- Forwarded message: From: owner-list@panda.org Sender: owner-forest-alert@panda.org Reply-to: wwf@panda.org Date: 96-09-03 16:42:11 EDT --http://www.panda.org --- WWF Feature News ---- Asian loggers latest threat to Brazil's rainforest=20 By Annic Johnson* Some of Asia's biggest logging companies with massive financial muscle have penetrated the BrazilianAmazon raising fears of imminent deforestation. Even before their arrival, the Brazilian authorities hadyet 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.= =20 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.=20 The study highlighted the short=ADterm 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=ADfunded project in Paragominas proves sustainable logging, harvesting and sawing is economically viable. In 1993, half a 200=ADhectare 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.=20 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 http://www.panda.org This message was sent to $list
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