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Philippines and other SE Asia
Philippines - Case Study in Poor Forestry Management By its own admission, the Philippines in the 1960s and 1970s allowed the decimation of its once magnificant rainforests for export to Japan. As a result, less than 4% of the original cover remains, and Japan has long since moved on to fresh supplies. However, the legacy of this destruction remains as for example in frequent devastating floods (including those in 2004 which led to a thousand or more deaths and the suspension of all logging). Although forestry practice has improved substantially, the area of production forest available is vastly depleted and there are frequent allegations of illegal logging. Indeed in the 1990s, the government took the extraordinary step of banning the sale of chainsaws in some regions. Chart 1 shows that, since the 1980s, Japan has not imported substantial quantities of timber from the Philippines. However, the Philippines was one of Japan's biggest suppliers of tropical timber during the 1960s and 1970s. During that period Japan and to a lesser extent the US succeeded in exhausting the Philippines' forests. The roundwood equivalent volume of timber which Japan imports from the Philippines has doubled since the turn of the decade. Consumption of timber in the Philippines has probably declined since the collapse of East Asia's bubble economies in the late 1990s, so some of this growth may reflect a drive by Philippine timber mills seeking to export products which the local market is no longer willing to consume. Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam Of these four countries, only Thailand directly exports to Japan a substantial roundwood equivalent volume of timber (which here is defined to exclude rubberwood). The others have supplied quantities which are significant in the context of the evolution of commercial timber exploitation in their own countries, particularly during the early 1990s. Both Thailand and Vietnam export substantial quantities of wood chips for Japan's paper industry - particularly to those companies which have invested in the plantations from which those wood chips derive. It is likely that Burma, Cambodia and Laos supply (or have supplied) Japan with significant quantities of timber indirectly, via China, Thailand and Vietnam - particularly as wooden furniture. That from Burma and Cambodia is likely to be illegal. China imports the great majority of the timber which Burma and Cambodia export. Thailand imports the great majority of the timber which Laos exports. Singapore Although Japan imported substantial quantities of timber from Singapore during the late 1980s and early 1990s (c.0.2 million cubic metres annually), it no longer does so. Singapore chooses to not declare its timber imports from Indonesia. However, it is likely that a proportion of the timber which Singapore exports derives from Indonesia, either directly or indirectly (via Singapore's leading timber supplier, Malaysia). It has been shown that Singapore (like Malaysia) launders illegal timber from Indonesia, particularly the species Ramin. Singapore is also the headquarters of at least two companies which are likely to procure (large quantities of) illegal timber - APP and APRIL.
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