Vietnam destroying Lao forests

March 19, 2008
By DENIS D. GRAY The Associated Press

BANGKOK, Thailand - Vietnam is acquiring huge quantities of illegally logged timber from neighboring Laos and turning it into furniture for consumers in the United States and Europe, an environmental group said Wednesday.

"Vietnam's booming economy and demand for cheap furniture in the West is driving rapid deforestation" in Laos, Julian Newman of the Britain-based Environmental Investigation Agency said at a news conference.

The group showed a video of fleets of trucks laden with logs crossing the border into Vietnam from Laos, which has banned the export of logs and sawn timber.

Every year, an estimated 17.6 million cubic feet of logs are smuggled across the border after false documents are produced and bribes paid, the group said.

The video included Vietnamese businessmen admitting that logs at their factories came from Laos in violation of the country's laws and were processed into furniture for export.

A huge pile of logs from Laos was shown in the Vietnamese port of Vinh, ready for sale.

Newman said businesses in Thailand are also buying illegally cut timber from Laos, which has some of the last great forests in mainland Southeast Asia.

"The cost of such unfettered greed is borne by poor rural communities in Laos who are dependent on the forests for their traditional livelihoods," Newman said.

Vietnamese and Thai officials were not immediately available for comment. The governments of both countries have in the past acknowledged the illegal trafficking of timber from Laos, although the scope of the trade has not previously been clear.

"The ultimate responsibility for this dire state of affairs rests with the consumer markets which import wood products made from stolen timber," Newman said.

Faith Doherty, another EIA staffer, said draft laws now before the U.S. Congress would curb such imports. She said the European Union was taking steps to certify furniture and other forest products as having come from legally procured timber.

An EIA report also released Wednesday noted that Vietnam has taken steps since the 1990s to conserve its own forests while at the same time expanding wooden furniture production, much of it with illegal timber.

Furniture exports from Vietnam totaled $2.4 billion last year, a tenfold increase since 2000. According to the Vietnamese government, 39 percent of the exports in 2006 went to the United States, 14 percent to Japan, 7 percent to Britain and 4 percent each to France and Germany.

"The plundering of Laos' forests involves high-level corruption and bribery and it is not just Vietnam which is exploiting its neighbor. Thai and Singapore traders are also cashing in," the report said.

Posing as investors, EIA staffers met one Thai businessman who bragged of paying bribes to senior Lao military officials to secure timber potentially worth $500 million, the group said.

Vietnam is the clearing house of illegal timber plundered from Cambodia in the 90s and from Laos now

Log trucks wait to cross the Laos-Vietnam border (top) and Laos customs officials watch illegal logs cross border to Vietnam

Garden furniture for UK market 'from illegally logged rainforest', says report

19/03/2008
By Paul Eccleston
The Telegraph (UK)

Garden centres and online suppliers are unwittingly helping fuel the illicit trade in timber from threatened rainforests, an undercover investigation claims.

Vietnam has become a clearing house for illegally logged hardwood timber from neighbouring Laos which it claims ends up as outdoor furniture in Britain.

Despite public pledges by governments to crackdown on the trade it is still 'business as usual' for criminal gangs who are stripping precious tropical forests for a quick profit.

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), which is dedicated to exposing crimes against wildlife and the environment, and its conservation partner Telapak, claim Vietnam's wood processing industry is threatening the last intact forests in the Mekong region, especially those in neighbouring Laos.

Since the mid-1990s, Vietnam has taken steps to conserve its remaining forests but at the same time has hugely expanded its wooden furniture production industry. Last year the industry was worth $2.4bn - a staggering 10-fold increase since 2000.

The EIA report says illegal timber constitutes "a significant part" of the imported raw materials supplying Vietnam's furniture factories with traders from Thailand and Singapore also involved.

And until important markets in the EU and US clean up their act and shut their markets to wood products made from illegal timber the loss of vital tropical forests will continue.

As some traditional wood-producing countries like Indonesia took steps to combat illegal logging the trade in stolen timber had shifted and Vietnam - which in the late 1990s was caught importing illegal timber from neighbouring Cambodia - has become the new hub of the trade.

New evidence from the EIA/Telapak investigation reveals that Vietnam is exploiting the forests of neighbouring Laos to obtain valuable hardwoods, such as yellow balau and keruing, for its outdoor furniture industry in direct contravention of laws in Laos banning the export of logs and sawn timber.

Some Vietnamese businesses also continue to buy illegally exported Indonesian logs from Malaysian dealers who can arrange for paperwork declaring the logs to be Malaysian.

Last year undercover investigators visited numerous furniture factories and found the majority to be using logs from Laos.

In the Vietnamese port of Vinh, they witnessed piles of huge logs from Laos awaiting sale. At the border crossing of Naphao, 45 trucks laden with logs were seen lining up on the Laos side waiting to cross into Vietnam.

EIA/Telapak estimate that at least 500,000 cubic metres of logs move from Laos to Vietnam every year.

The report alleges the plundering of Laos' forests involves high-level corruption and bribery and investigators met with one Thai businessman who bragged of paying bribes to senior Laos military officials to secure supplies of timber worth potentially half a billion dollars.

The cost of the illicit trade was being borne by poor rural communities in Laos who were dependent on the forests for their traditional livelihoods. They gained nothing from the trade with the money going instead to corrupt officials in Laos and businesses in Vietnam and Thailand.

EIA's head of Forests Campaign, Julian Newman, said: "The ultimate responsibility for this dire state of affairs rests with the consumer markets with import wood products made from stolen timber."

"Until these states clean up their act and shut their markets to illegal wood products, the loss of precious tropical forests will continue unabated."

EIA/Telapak called for better enforcement by the timber-producing and processing countries and new laws banning the import of products and timber derived from illegal logging in the EU and US.

The report names the Blackpool-based Transcontinental group as an importer of garden furniture which it supplies to garden centres, retailers and internet traders under the 'Suntime' brand. It says that while the company mainly trades in certified eucalyptus outdoor furniture it also sells keruing garden products.

Investigations in Vietnam revealed that Transcontinental are supplied with wooden furniture by Hoang Phat Co., Ltd., where staff informed EIA that they bought keruing round logs smuggled illegally out of Laos.

The company's Marketing Manager, Mr David Jones, said: "We don't have our own people in Vietnam but we are FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) accredited and we spend a lot of time making sure our wood comes from the right sources."

And sales manager Andrew Fox said: "We can refute absolutely what is being claimed. We only take a eucalyptus product from Hoang Phat and not the keruing and balau which EIA is claiming. We have full chain-of-custody which we are happy to show."

One of the internet companies named in the report, www.Greenfingers.com of Livingston, Scotland said they would never knowingly source products from illegally logged wood and always sought out sustainably sourced timber.

General Manager Moira Peterson said: "Specifically with Transcontinental we have significantly reduced the wooden product ranges we run with them. We had, however, received verbal assurances from them of the Chain-of-Custody of the products we continue to run.

"Before 2006 they were one of our principal suppliers of wooden furniture but now provide us with a only a tiny fraction of our range. If these allegations are true and the timber is illegally logged, then we will immediately remove the products from sale."

Another internet company named - BBQs2go based in Ware, Hertfordshire, said they had not sold any furniture supplied by Transcontinental since July last year.

Managing Director of parent company Deans Furnishers Ltd Dean Ambridge, said: " If these allegations are true we will remove the products from ourwebsite. We wouldn't supply any furniture that came from unsustainable sources."

Mr Stephen Thorp Managing Director of another internet company named in the report, Your Price Furniture.co.uk Limited, of High Peak Derbyshire said:

"As a tiny family run business buying only five or six containers per year, we are under the impression that the FSC chain of custody certification system is there to ensure that the timber used in manufacture originates from renewable resources.

"We have to rely on the relevant authorities' and organisations such as the FSC to provide certification that the factories we buy from are operating responsibly in their timber sourcing."