LONDON: Insatiable Chinese demand for timber is driving a grossly unsustainable illegal logging
and timber smuggling crisis which threatens to undermine Mozambique’s forest resources.
Launching the new report
First Class Crisis today, the Environmental Investigation Agency
(EIA) revealed that a staggering 93 per cent of logging in Mozambique
during 2013 was illegal.
Research,
undercover investigations and analysis conducted by EIA from 2013-14
demonstrate that the key driver of forest crime in Mozambique is ongoing
demand from China.
Some
76 per cent of all global timber exports from Mozambique in 2013 were
illegally cut in excess of reported harvests - and the vast majority of
them (averaging 93 per
cent from 2007-13) went to China.
“The
staggering level of illegal logging and timber smuggling for the Chinese
market has put harvesting volumes way beyond sustainable levels,
despite claims to the contrary
by Mozambican officials,” said EIA Forest Campaigner Jago Wadley.
“If
the excessive focus on just a handful of commercial timber species
continues, commercial stocks will be largely depleted during the next 15
years.
“This
veritable epidemic of crime and environmental mismanagement has deprived
the world’s second least developed country of US$146 million in lost
tax revenues since 2007
- and without major reforms, Mozambique’s forests and forest economy
are staring down the barrel of very a bleak future.”
EIA is
calling for an immediate suspension of all timber exports until
Mozambique can ensure harvests, consumption and trade can be sustainably
met from remaining forest
resources.
Mozambique became China’s biggest African supplier of logs by value in 2013, but 46 per cent of China’s 516,296 cubic meters (m3) of timber imports from Mozambique
(235,500 m3) were also smuggled out of the country. Lined up end-to-end in 20ft shipping containers
of 20m3 capacity, this stolen timber would stretch more than 44 miles (72km).
The pattern and scale of crime by Chinese companies is unfortunately consistent with the findings of EIA’s February 2013 report
First Class Connections, with Chinese-owned timber companies
already exposed by EIA and others continuing to smuggle illegal
Mozambican timber to China.
Wadley
added: “Impoverished rural communities are bearing the burden of
Mozambique’s ongoing illegal logging crisis, a crisis that will not end
without immediate and credible
action by all concerned parties.”
