Myanmar timber still smuggled to China

Grant Peck Associated Press 21 Oct 09;

BANGKOK — There has been a sharp decline in timber illegally imported into China from Myanmar, but smugglers are still supplying Chinese companies that export the wood to Europe, America and throughout the world, an environmental watchdog agency said Wednesday.

The British-based group Global Witness, in a report issued Wednesday, called on Chinese and Myanmar authorities to step up efforts to stop illegal logging in northern Myanmar and crack down on illicit cross-border trade.

"Clearly action taken by authorities in China and Burma to combat illegal logging in Kachin state has had a significant positive impact," Global Witness quotes its forest policy expert, Jon Buckrell, saying. "But they should do more to close down the remaining industry, which is almost wholly reliant on the illegal timber supply from Burma."

After an October 2005 report by Global Witness alleged that vast stretches of virgin forest were being destroyed to feed China's growing demand for wood, Beijing sought to curb the trade by closing border crossings to timber trucks from its southern neighbor. The military government of Myanmar — also known as Burma — announced it had suspended timber cutting, transport and shipments to China.

In the 2005 report, Global Witness described the area where the forests were being cut as "very possibly the most bio-diverse, rich, temperate area on earth" — a place home to red pandas, leopards and tigers. It said that China depended largely on imported lumber from Malaysia, Russia, Myanmar, Indonesia and Gabon after it banned the felling of its own old-growth trees in 1998.

China became the biggest foreign investor in Myanmar this past year, and is the closest ally of its military regime, which is shunned by the West because of its poor human rights record and failure to hand over power to a democratically elected government.

The new report, "A Disharmonious Trade," said trade data showed that imports of logs and sawed wood from Myanmar to China fell by more than 70 percent between 2005 and 2008, confirming a trend found by the group's own field investigations.

But smugglers use "bribery, false papers, transportation at night and avoiding checkpoints" to get around the restrictions on sending the wood to China, the report said.

China's Foreign Ministry and Myanmar's Forestry Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Global Witness said its researchers had visited flooring companies on China's east coast to gauge the availability of timber from Myanmar, and found widespread use of teak from Myanmar, along with other high value species such as black walnut.

Global Witness said its investigators were told by 13 of the 14 firms visited that it was still possible for them to obtain timber from Myanmar despite the import restrictions, and that several admitted that their supplies were obtained through smuggling.

The report said the Chinese companies export worldwide, including to the United States and Europe. It said some U.S. based companies advertise wood flooring from Myanmar, although under a U.S. law amended by Congress last year, the Lacey Act, it is illegal to import illegally obtained plants and their products, including timber and wood products.