Japanese Firms Importing Illegal Russian Timber

Significant quantities of illegal timber products from the forests of Siberia and the Russian Far East are flowing into Japan, according to a new report by the US-based nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). While the United States and European Union have recently enacted new policies that prohibit the import of illegally sourced wood and wood products and require companies to conduct heightened due diligence in their sourcing practices, Japan’s failure to enact similar measures makes it an open market for illegal timber products from around the world.

The report, The Open Door: Japan’s Continuing Failure to Prevent Imports of Illegal Russian Timber, details supply chains for illegally cut Siberian pine, bought by Chinese traders and imported to China, manufactured into wood products and sold on markets all over Japan. In undercover interviews, officials from San Xia, one of the largest Chinese importers of Russian timber, detailed how they purchase this timber from illegal loggers deep inside Siberia and launder this timber across the border using documentation from their forest concession. In factories across northeastern China, San Xia transforms this timber into edge-glued lumber, 90% of which is sold to Japan for housing construction.

“The no questions asked market for wood products in Japan is fueling rampant illegal logging in eastern Russia,” said Kate Horner, Director of Forest Campaigns at EIA. “The time has come for Japan to join other developed nations in support legal forest products trade. Without swift action by the government to prohibit illegal timber from entering its market, Japanese consumers will continue to be unwitting financiers of the timber mafias that are raiding the world’s forests.”

Illegal logging is estimated to comprise at least 50% of total timber harvests in eastern Russia, with some estimates nearing 90%, and poses one of the gravest threats to both the region’s forest ecology and the future of the Russian forest products industry. This trade fuels corruption and environmental destruction, including some of the most biodiverse and pristine forests in the Russian Federation. These products directly compete with Japanese domestic timber, depressing prices globally and putting Japanese forest producers at a competitive disadvantage.

This report follows EIA’s 2013 Liquidating the Forests: Hardwood Flooring, Organized Crime, and the World’s Last Siberian Tigers. In the 2013 report, EIA investigators documented how Lumber Liquidators, the largest specialty flooring retailer in the United States, had purchased millions of square feet of hardwood flooring from a Chinese supplier who sources illegal oak originating in the Russian Far East, the northernmost range of the last 450 Siberian tigers in the world. In September 2013, the United Stated Department of Justice initiated a federal investigation of Lumber Liquidators reportedly for alleged violations of the Lacey Act.

“Organized criminal groups send out logging brigades to steal valuable hardwoods from protected areas, decimating Russian forests and depriving the Russian economy of millions of dollars in lost tax revenue,” said Horner. “Importing cheap illegal wood from eastern Russia is a tragic crime of convenience that directly undercuts Japanese business trying to play by the rules. Any company buying products containing wood from eastern Russia, whether directly or via China, should know that it may be using stolen wood and must take great care to ensure legality.”

Japan must take decisive and immediate action to close its market to the cheap, illegal timber that is undercutting both its domestic forestry operations as well as the forests and livelihoods of its trading partners.

Access to the report: http://eia-global.org/images/uploads/EIA_Liquidating_the_Forests.pdf

Editor’s Notes

1. Environmental Investigation Agency. 2014. “The Open Door: Japan’s Continuing Failure to Prevent Imports of Illegal Russian Timber.”
2. Environmental Investigation Agency. 2013. “Liquidating the Forests: Hardwood Flooring, Organized Crime, and the World’s Last Siberian Tigers.”

Source: http://eia-global.org/news-media/japanese-firms-importing-illegal-russian-timber

Every tree matters: Even a little deforestation alters climate

by Bill Laurence

Thinking about knocking down a few trees in the backyard?  Think again.  Felling even a handful of trees can change the local climate, according to a new study.

Think twice before cutting…

It’s been known for some time that clearing forests can have regional-scale impacts on climate by reducing evapotranspiration (the emission of water vapor by plants, which cools the land) and changing albedo (how much solar radiation gets reflected away from the ground surface).

But now it appears these effects happen at surprisingly small scales.  Especially in warmer parts of the world, clearing even a football field-sized area is enough to provoke significant heating of the immediate area.

That’s an important insight.  Folks living in tropical and subtropical areas often complain that deforested lands are unpleasantly warm, less productive for farming, and more prone to harboring diseases.

So, spread the word: Cutting down trees doesn’t just have a global impact, by increasing carbon emissions; or a regional impact, by changing evapotranspiration and albedo.

Killing trees also has a sizable local impact, meaning it directly affects the quality of life of those living nearby.

Source: http://alert-conservation.org/issues-research-highlights/2014/4/16/every-tree-matters-even-a-little-deforestation-alters-climate

Boycotts are a crucial weapon to fight environment-harming firms

by Bill Laurence, distinguished Research Professor and Australian Laureate at James Cook University

Furniture retailer Harvey Norman has been targeted by activists, in a campaign described by the federal government as dishonest. AAP Image/The Last Stand/Matthew Newton

In October 2000, I was driving through downtown Boise, Idaho, and nearly careered off the road. Just in front of me was a giant inflatable Godzilla-like dinosaur, well over 30m tall. It was towering over the headquarters of Boise Cascade, one of North America’s biggest wood products corporations. For years, the firm had been tangling with environmental groups who blamed the company’s logging practices for declines in the extent of old-growth forests across the globe.

The huge inflatable reptile was the inspired idea of the Rainforest Action Network, who used it to label Boise Cascade a dinosaur of the timber industry. The blow-up dinosaur was headline news across the United States and the label stuck. Although Boise Cascade tried to deny it was yielding to environmental pressure, it ultimately agreed to phase out all of its old-growth wood products.

Environmental campaigns such as this one have become an increasingly important arrow in the quiver of conservation groups, for a very good reason. The world has become hyper-corporatised and globalised, with the result that, as I reported in 2008, deforestation is now substantially driven by major industries rather than by the exploits of poor people trying to make a living off the land.

Campaigns and boycotts get the attention of these large corporations, because they hit them where it hurts: their reputation and market share.

Last-ditch tactics

Boycotts are typically a last resort. The Rainforest Action Network tried for years to nudge, cajole and finally pressure Boise Cascade to phase out old-growth products, without success. Its gentler tactics worked fine with other big corporations such as Home Depot and Lowe’s, but it took a gigantic dinosaur to get Boise Cascade’s attention.

Globally, some of the most impressive environmental achievements have come via boycotts, or at least the threat of them. Just in the past year, four of the world’s biggest forest-destroying corporations have announced new “no deforestation” policies in response to such environmental pressures.

Among the worst of these was Asia Pulp & Paper, whose reputation had become so synonymous with rainforest destruction that the retailers selling its products began fleeing in droves. Today, the corporation has ostensibly turned over a new leaf and even thanked Greenpeace – one of its most persistent critics – for helping it to see the light.

Across the globe, boycotts have helped to rein in predatory behaviour by timber, oil palm, soy, seafood and other corporations. They have led to impressive environmental benefits, such as a landmark forestry peace deal in Canada and a pledge by Australia’s major supermarkets to stock sustainably-sourced tuna.

Banning boycotts?

But now, the power of boycotts might be on the brink of being reined in, after the federal government floated the idea of banning organised boycotts of companies on environmental grounds.

The move has sparked apoplexy among free-speech advocates, and came as a surprise even to observers whose expectations had already been lowered by the Commonwealth’s plan to devolve environmental powers to the states and territories.

Parliamentary agriculture secretary Richard Colbeck said the move would be aimed at “dishonest campaigns”, singling out the campaign against furniture retailer Harvey Norman, which activists accuse of logging native forests.

“They can say what they like, they can campaign about what they like, they can have a point of view, but they should not be able to run a specific business-focused or market-focused campaign, and they should not be able to say things that are not true,” Colbeck told Guardian Australia.

At odds with free speech

Predictably, environmental groups are unimpressed. Reece Turner, a forests campaigner with Greenpeace-Australia, told me:

This policy is at odds with the Liberal party’s professed commitment to uninhibited free speech. The Coalition is going to remarkable extremes to protect big industry from campaigns that are essentially focused on greater transparency of business practices. These campaigns are designed to inform consumer choices – something the Liberal party should be supporting.

One of the more notable aspects of the proposed ban is that it could directly conflict with the Coalition’s stated environmental priorities – one of which is a desire to slow global rainforest destruction as a means to combat global warming.

Of all the environmental actions undertaken to date, boycotts have probably had the greatest direct benefit for rainforests.

As an aside, the Coalition government has recently struggled to find a consistent line on both environmentalism and free speech. Straight after taking office it scuttled the Climate Commission, and is currently fighting to repeal a raft of other carbon policies. Yet it has also announced that Australia will use this year’s Brisbane G20 summit as a “catalyst” to help China, India, Europe and the United States to cut their carbon emissions.

At this early stage, it’s difficult to say whether or not the proposed ban on environmental boycotts will solidify into firm Coalition policy or merely fade away, its proponents having realised this could be too polarising an idea. Let’s hope for the latter. This is a scheme that deserves to go the way of the dinosaurs.

Source: https://theconversation.com/boycotts-are-a-crucial-weapon-to-fight-environment-harming-firms-25267?

Big trees, like the old-growth forests they inhabit, are declining globally

Rhett Butler, mongabay.com 

Already on the decline, demise of giant trees may be hastened by global warming.

Already on the decline worldwide, big trees face a dire future due to habitat fragmentation, selective harvesting by loggers, exotic invaders, and the effects of climate change, warns an article published this week in New Scientist magazine. 
Reviewing research from forests around the world, William F. Laurance, an ecologist at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, provides evidence of decline among the world’s “biggest and most magnificent” trees and details the range of threats they face. He says their demise will have substantial impacts on biodiversity and forest ecology, while worsening climate change.

“To persist, big trees need a safe place to live and long periods of stability,” he told mongabay.com via email. “But time and stability are becoming very rare commodities in our modern world.”

Giant trees offer critical habitat and forage for wildlife, while transpiring massive amounts of water through their leaves, contributing to local rainfall. Old trees also lock up massive amounts of carbon — in some forests they can account for up to a quarter of living biomass.

Dipterocarps are commonly targeted by loggers in Southeast Asia. This Dipterocarp was photographed in Borneo by Rhett A. Butler.

But their ability to sequester carbon and render other ecosystem services is threatened by human activities. Some of the world’s largest trees are particularly targeted by loggers. The oldest trees are among the most valuable and therefore the first to be cut in “virgin” forest areas.

Big trees are also sensitive to fragmentation, which exposes them to stronger winds and drier conditions. Laurance’s own work in the Amazon has shown substantial die-off of canopy giants in small forest fragments. Their susceptibility seems counter-intuitive given big trees’ life histories, which invariably include periods of drought and other stress.

“All around the tropics, big canopy and emergent trees are succumbing to strong droughts,” Laurance said. “That’s been a surprise to me and many other ecologists, because big, ancient trees would have had to survive many droughts in the past.”

Forest giants may suffer disproportionately from climate change, writes Laurance in New Scientist, highlighting research in La Selva, Costa Rica by David and Deborah Clark.

“Trees are probably getting a double-whammy when the thermometer rises,’ says David Clark. “During the day, their photosynthesis shuts down when it gets too warm, and at night they consume more energy because their metabolic rate increases, much as a reptile’s would do when it gets warmer.” With less energy being produced in warmer years and more being consumed just to survive, there is less energy available for growth.

The Clarks’ hypothesis, if correct, means tropical forests could shrink over time. The largest, oldest trees would progressively die off and tend not to be replaced. Alarmingly, this might trigger a positive feedback that could destabilize the climate: as older trees die, forests would release some of their stored carbon into the atmosphere, prompting a vicious circle of further warming, forest shrinkage and carbon emissions.

Giant Kapok tree in the Brazilian Amazon. Photo by Rhett A. Butler.

Laurance notes climate change is having less direct impacts on forests, including creating conditions for exotic pathogens to thrive. For example, pathogens such as Dutch Elm Disease, introduced by trade or circumstance, can devastate native forests.

All told, the outlook for big trees is not good, according to Laurance.

“The decline of big trees foretells a different world where ancient behemoths are replaced by short-lived pioneers and generalists that can grow anywhere, where forests store less carbon and sustain fewer dependent animals, where giant cathedral-like crowns become a thing of the past.”

Source: http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0126-big_trees.html

UMD Leads 1st Local-to-Global Mapping of Forest

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – A University of Maryland-led, multi-organizational team has created the first high-resolution global map of forest extent, loss and gain. This free resource greatly improves the ability to understand human and naturally-induced forest changes and the local to global implications of these changes on environmental, economic and other natural and societal systems, members of the team say.

In a new study, the team of 15 university, Google and government researchers reports a global loss of 2.3 million square kilometers (888,000 square miles) of forest between 2000 and 2012 and a gain of 800,000 square kilometers (309,000 square miles) of new forest.

Their study, published online on November 14 in the journal Science, documents the new database, including a number of key findings on global forest change.  For example, the tropics were the only climate domain to exhibit a trend, with forest loss increasing by 2,101 square kilometers (811 square miles) per year.  Brazil’s well-documented reduction in deforestation during the last decade was more than offset by increasing forest loss in Indonesia, Malaysia, Paraguay, Bolivia, Zambia, Angola and elsewhere.

“This is the first map of forest change that is globally consistent and locally relevant,” says University of Maryland Professor of Geographical Sciences Matthew Hansen, team leader and corresponding author on the Science paper.

“Losses or gains in forest cover shape many important aspects of an ecosystem, including climate regulation, carbon storage, biodiversity and water supplies, but until now there has not been a way to get detailed, accurate, satellite-based and readily available data on forest cover change from local to global scales,” Hansen says.

To build this first of its kind forest mapping resource, Hansen, UMD Research Associate Professor Peter Potapov and five other UMD geographical science researchers drew on the decades-long UMD experience in the use of satellite data to measure changes in forest and other types of land cover. Landsat 7 data from 1999 through 2012 were obtained from a freely available archive at the United States Geological Survey’s center for Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS).  More than 650,000 Landsat images were processed to derive the final characterization of forest extent and change.

The analysis was made possible through collaboration with colleagues from Google Earth Engine, who implemented the models developed at UMD for characterizing the Landsat data sets.  Google Earth Engine is a massively parallel technology for high-performance processing of geospatial data and houses a copy of the entire Landsat image catalog.  What would have taken a single computer 15 years to perform was completed in a matter of days using Google Earth Engine computing.

Hansen and his coauthors say their mapping tool greatly improves upon existing knowledge of global forest cover by providing fine resolution (30 meter) maps that accurately and consistently quantify annual loss or gain of forest over more than a decade. This mapping database, which will be updated annually, quantifies all forest stand-replacement disturbances, whether due to logging, fire, disease or storms. And they say it is based on repeatable definitions and measurements while previous efforts at national and global assessments of forest cover have been largely dependent on countries’ self-reported estimates based on widely varying definitions and measures of forest loss and gain.

Dynamics from local to regional to global scale are quantified.  For example, subtropical forests were found to have the highest rates of change, largely due to intensive forestry land uses.  The disturbance rate of North American subtropical forests, located in the Southeast United States, was found to be four times that of South American rainforests during the study period; more than 31 percent of U.S. southeastern forest cover was either lost or regrown.  At national scales, Paraguay, Malaysia and Cambodia were found to have the highest rates of forest loss.  Paraguay was found to have the highest ratio of forest loss to gain, indicating an intensive deforestation dynamic.

The study confirms that well-documented efforts by Brazil – which has long been responsible for a majority of the world’s tropical deforestation – to reduce its rainforest clearing have had a significant effect. Brazil showed the largest decline in annual forest loss of any country, cutting annual forest loss in half, from a high of approximately 40,000 square kilometers (15,444 square miles) in 2003-2004 to 20,000 square kilometers (7,722 square miles) in 2010-2011. Indonesia had the largest increase in forest loss, more than doubling its annual loss during the study period to nearly 20,000 square kilometers (7,722 square miles) in 2011-2012.

Hansen and colleagues say the global data sets of forest change they have created contain information that can provide a “transparent, sound and consistent basis to quantify critical environmental issues,” including the causes of the mapped changes in the amount of forest; the status of world’s remaining intact natural forests; biodiversity threats from changes in forest cover; the carbon stored or emitted as a result of gains or losses in tree cover in both managed and unmanaged forests; and the effects of efforts to halt or reduce forest loss.

For example, Hansen says, that while their study shows the efforts of Brazil’s government to slow loss of rainforest have been effective, it also shows that a 2011 Indonesian government moratorium on new logging licenses was actually followed by significant increases in deforestation in 2011 and 2012.

“Brazil used Landsat data to document its deforestation trends, then used this information in its policy formulation and implementation. They also shared these data, allowing others to assess and confirm their success,” Hansen says.  “Such data have not been generically available for other parts of the world. Now, with our global mapping of forest changes every nation has access to this kind of information, for their own country and the rest of the world.”

Global map of forest change: http://earthenginepartners.appspot.com/science-2013-global-forest

Support for Landsat data analysis and characterization was provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the United States Geological Survey and Google, Inc. GLAS data analysis was supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Development of all methods was supported by NASA through its Land Cover and Land Use Change, Terrestrial Ecology, Applied Sciences and Measures programs (grants NNH05ZDA001N, NNH07ZDA001N, NNX12AB43G, NNX12AC78G, NNX08AP33A and NNG06GD95G) and by the United States Agency for International Development through its CARPE program.

High-resolution global maps 21st-century forest cover change, Science, Nov. 15, 2013, Vol 342 #6160, authors M. C. Hansen, P. V. Potapov, S. A. Turubanova, A. Tyukavina, L. Chini, C. O. Justice and J. R. G. Townshend of the University of Maryland; R. Moore, M. Hancher and D. Thau of Google, Inc.;  S. V. Stehman of the State University of New York; S. J. Goetz of Woods Hole Research Center; T. R. Loveland of the United States Geological Survey; and A. Kommareddy, and A. Egorov of South Dakota State University.

Contacts:

Lee Tune, 301-405-4679
Laura Ours, 301-405-5722

Photos: Source: Hansen, Potapov, Moore, Hancher et al., 2013

Source: http://umdrightnow.umd.edu/news/umd-leads-1st-local-global-mapping-forest

Key facts about Forests

Forest cover¹

• The total forest area of the world is about 4 billion hectares, which represents nearly 30 percent of the Earth’s landmass. Approximately 56 percent of these forests are located in tropical and subtropical areas.
• Forest cover is unevenly distributed. Only seven countries possess about 60 percent of it, 25 countries around 82 percent and 170 countries share the remaining 18 percent.
• Planted forests account for approximately 3.8 percent of total forest area, or 140 million hectares.

Forest loss²

• Net global forest loss is estimated to be about 7.3 million hectares per year for the period 2000-2005.
• This represents a decrease from the period 1990–2000, for which the average deforestation rate was 8.9 million hectares per year.
• The highest amounts of deforestation occurred in South America, with 4.3 million hectares per year, followed by Africa with 4 million hectares per year.

Forests and livelihoods

• More than 1 billion people rely heavily on forests for their livelihoods.³
• More than 2 billion people, a third of the world’s population, use biomass fuels, mainly firewood, to cook and to heat their homes.
• Hundreds of millions of people rely on traditional medicines harvested from forests.⁴
• In some 60 developing countries, hunting and fishing on forested land supplies more than a fifth of protein requirements.⁵

Forests and the economy⁶

• In 2003, the international trade in sawn wood, pulp, paper and boards amounted to almost US $150 billion, or just over 2 percent of world trade.
• The developed world accounted for two-thirds of this production and consumption.
• In many developing countries, forest-based enterprises provide at least one-third of all rural non-farm employment and generate income through the sale of wood products.
• The value of the trade in non-timber forest products has been estimated at US $11 billion. These products include pharmaceutical plants, mushrooms, nuts, syrups and cork.

Forests and climate change⁷

• It is estimated that 1.7 billion tonnes of carbon are released annually due to land use change. The major portion is from tropical deforestation.
• This represents about 20 percent of current global carbon emissions, which is greater than the percentage emitted by the global transport sector with its intensive use of fossil fuels.

Sources:

[1] Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO) 2007. State of the World’s Forests 2007, FAO, Rome.
[2] FAO 2009. State of the World’s Forests 2009, FAO, Rome.
[3] World Bank 2004. Sustaining Forests: A Development Strategy, Washington.
[4] UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2009. Indicators of Sustainable Development (1 June 2009).
[5] Mery, G., Alfaro, R., Kanninen, M. and Lobovikov, M. (eds.) 2005. Forests in the Global Balance: Changing Paradigms,
IUFRO World Series 17. International Union of Forest Research Organisations (IUFRO), Helsinki.
[6] World Bank 2004. Sustaining Forests: A Development Strategy, Washington D.C.
[7] IPCC 2007. Summary for Policymakers In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Sciences Basis (1 June 2009).

http://www.cifor.org/mediamultimedia/newsroom/key-facts-about-forests.html