By Emily Flynn       It’s unlikely you would peer down at your popsicle stick and wonder where it came from, but that seemingly insignificant piece of wood has made quite a journey. From one of millions of trees in a forest perhaps continents away, to a processing plant in a developing country, onwards to a supplier, a chain store, and finally your freezer. Your patio chair, pencils, and picture frames all boast a similar pedigree—these seemingly ordinary objects pass along an extraordinary voyage we often take for granted, and which can often be traced back through less than innocuous means.

The UN estimates that the world’s rainforests are being felled at the rate of six-million hectares per year [according to 2005 statistics]. Countries in Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia once swathed with woodland are being cleared to meet the global demand for timber products. Some billions of dollars worth of timber goods are bought and sold each year, and this rate is increasing at a dizzying pace as newly industrialized countries add fuel to the fire of massive forest clearing. The rising standard of living and the overall mass consumption of inexpensive goods in countries like India and China are speeding up global demand at a rate the supply chain cannot meet without making massive environmental concessions.

The European Union (EU) and the United States (US) are the world’s leading importers of wood and paper products, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars of goods each year, largely from Southeast Asian markets. The Environmental Investigation Agency  (EIA) estimated that in 2000 the US imported $330 million dollars worth of timber products from Indonesia alone. The archipelago is home to one of the world’s largest remaining tropical rainforests, but is privy to an incalculable rate of lost forest cover.  

In the area known as the “Golden Triangle”—Laos, Burma, Vietnam, and Thailand—the immense clearing initiatives and their negative effects on the local populations has caused the Montagnard Foundation, the official representation of the Montagnard (Degar) minority in Laos and Vietnam, to rename the area the “Triangle of Death”.

A boom in the furniture production industry in Vietnam, for instance, has put the country as the fourth largest wood processing site in the world. Outdoor furniture produced in Vietnam is being sold en masse in the US and Europe at low prices, driving demand for the cheapest timber possible.

In addition to the clearing of large areas of forest for profit, timber plantations of high-demand tree types are replacing native trees with more lucrative species and further exploiting massive land areas, many of which are ancestral lands of indigenous populations. (EIA report Borderlines, March 2008; Scott Johnson, UNPO interview, January 2009) Coffee, rubber, and palm are the main cash crops replacing native species, due to their high demand on the international market.    

Further Complexities

Countries may display a veneer of conservation and management by protecting their own natural resources, but buy illegally from neighbouring countries with more lax regulations (EIA report Borderlines, March 2008). These sorts of trades make it harder and harder to track what is known as the “chain of custody”—or the origin of the timber through to the final sale as a finished product.  And the more complex the chain, the harder it is to regulate and measure sustainability.

The cross-national trading serves to further disenfranchise local communities through complex networks subject to bribery and political subversion. Too often, the profits flowing into the countries of origin from timber or the crops replacing the native forests get lost in a nefarious political system plagued by cronyism and corruption.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, €10-15 billion “disappears” each year through illegal timber trading networks. Still, there are some at the top who are benefiting from the black market trade. In a recent [2009] interview for the UNPO, human rights advocate Scott Johnson highlighted the lopsided distribution of capital associated with the illegal trading in Vietnam:

“All the money goes to the fat cats up at the top – the government officials, the military who are controlling the logging and very, very little ever gets down to the people – certainly not to the indigenous populations. They have been totally sidelined.”*  

“There’s no place like home”

With many of these debauched production practices come relocation practices implemented through government programmes irrespective of the indigenous peoples’ cultural ties to the land. The Degar are often “relocated to areas of poor soils or rocky lands where farming is impossible,” Kok Ksor, President of the Montagnards Foundation, noted via email. “As a result, many of our men, women, and children [die] of malnutrition and starvation.” Ksor pointed out that at one time, approximately 1% of the inhabitants of the Central Highlands, the ancestral home of the Degar, were ethnic Vietnamese, while contemporary numbers point to something closer to 90%.

Where indigenous populations are forcibly removed, environmental problems stemming from the logging process soon follow. Harvesting and post-felling production also increases the pollutants in the air, land, and waterways used by local communities, which sometimes compels indigenous inhabitants to relocate.   

In a deforested swatch of land, the rainfall moves vast amounts of top soil, otherwise anchored by tree roots and brush, into villages and waterways. Landslides have become more prevalent in logged areas once covered by forest and thousands of people lose their homes and livelihoods each year as a result.

Southeast Asia is home to some of the world’s most diverse ecosystems; abundantly rich in flora and fauna, significant in the traditions of the local communities, and integral to indigenous ways of life. What’s more, the loss of biodiversity associated with rampant deforestation is a global issue. The conversion of woodlands to agricultural land greatly reduces the natural wonders that are not only beautiful, but vital to the natural order of the planet.

There are plenty of macro-level concerns related to the mass destruction of forest cover—notably the imbalance of carbon absorption and emission. The offsetting of carbon which occurs naturally is greatly inhibited when such extensive areas are cleared and carbon emissions are on such a steady rise.  According to a New York Times article from 2007, Indonesia alone, with its wide-spread policies of deforestation for the planting of palm, accounts for 20% of the world’s green house gas emissions, making it the third ranking green house gas emitter in the world.

International Attention

“We are at the mercy of the international community,” Ksor stated, suggesting that the stakeholders in the major corporations doing business with the logging industry in Vietnam pay closer attention to the way in which the timber products are procured. It is literally a matter of survival for the Degar community that international attention be paid to the logging industry on both the demand and supply sides.

Everything from tables to toothpicks is made from wood felled from the world’s temperate and tropical forests. The intricate paths between cutting and consumption highlight systematic environmental destruction, corporate and consumer complicity, and often egregious violations of human rights perpetrated by powerful kleptocratic governments. Despite an increase in the global and unilateral regulatory instruments protecting the felling and selling of timber, illegal logging is still a mainstay industry in many parts of the world.

Stricter regulations must be put in place to quell the rampant use of illegal means of timber production.  In countries where there are already guidelines for forest management, there cannot be a blind eye turned towards the import of timber from other areas that do not meet international standards.  A major step in the direction of accountability would be for the industrialized nations who import finished goods to take a closer look at the “chain of custody” for the goods they acquire.  As consumers, a demand for goods obtained through legitimate sources will push corporations towards more transparent operations, because even the smallest and most ordinary objects can have a significant effect on the lives of others.  


*To read the UNPO interview with Scott Johnson, click here.