State of the Rainforest 2014

Timber, pulp and paper

Global demand for wood and wood products is a major driver of tropical forest degradation and subsequent deforestation, particularly in Latin America and Southeast Asia. 24 Although deforestation in Central Africa has been slower, not least due to long lasting conflicts, conditions are changing and a growing proportion of the region’s forests outside of protected areas are coming under logging concessions. According to a recent World Bank study, a fourth of the Congo Basin’s lowland dense forest area is under industrial logging concessions. 25 Demand for timber is projected to triple globally by 2050, 26 which will mean even greater pressure on the rainforest. It is often argued that plantations can help reduce the pressure on natural forests, 27 and if established beyond forest areas or on degraded lands, this can be true. In practice, however, plantations are very often established in rainforest areas and on recently logged or degraded forest lands, adding to the total pressure on forests. Production of paper and paperboard is a rapidly growing industry, with paper products increasingly exported to expanding economies in Asia, like China. 28 Today around 40% of all harvested wood is processed to make paper and paperboard. 29

countries, like Papua New Guinea, logging companies efficiently circumvent national laws, using agricultural licenses to extract timber, without planting crops afterwards. As a response to the concerns over global deforestation, a number of different certification systems have been established to promote better forest management. However, even the most recognized certification body, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), has been criticized for serious breaches in their monitoring process, leading to violations of their own standards. 31 Both the US and the EU has established systems aimed at excluding illegally logged timber from their markets. The EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan from 2003 uses so-called Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPA) between the EU and timber-exporting countries outside the EU. Under the VPA, the timber-producing country develops systems to verify that its timber exports are legal, and the EU agrees to accept only licensed imports from that country. 32 In the US, the century old Lacey Act, aimed at protecting wildlife, was amended in 2008 to include timber and timber products, holding US importers responsible if they import illegally logged timber. Positive as they are, it is still too early to judge the impact of these new legal and political approaches on logging practices and the international timber trade.

In some key producer countries for tropical timber, it is estimated that illegal logging accounts for 50–90% of the production. 30 In some

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STATE OF THE RAINFOREST 2014