An agreement on legally-sourced timber imports from Vietnam to the EU that was finally signed in October is now being held up against the reality on the ground in the Southeast Asian country.
The EU’s Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan with Vietnam comes at a time when the timber industry there remains blighted by corruption, theft, and illegal logging.
An estimated 30,000 to 50,000 forest violations are reported every year, according to global certification non-profit organisation, Nepcon.
Official certification rules and procedures have long been on the books for every level of the trade. Despite that, from logging in the central highlands to one of Southeast Asia’s largest wood-processing factories and a timber market town known colloquially as “billionaire’s village,” safeguards do exist, but are flouted.
In the remote mountain town of Muong Xen in Nghe An province, only 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the Laos border, forest farmer Kha Hai Thanh has been working with wood for nearly 30 years.
Though aged 79, Thanh and his wifeVu Thi Lan continue to manage a farm of 4.8 hectares (nearly 12 acres), most of which is used to grow timber. They grow more than 2,000 trees, with species ranging from chittagong wood (Chukrasia tabularis) to clove (Syzygium aromaticum) and chinaberry (Melia azedarach).
Thanh claims that his clove trees are regularly threatened by illegal loggers and drug addicts from a nearby commune. Attempts to visit his farm were refused by local authorities.
Thanh once managed a specialist wood company, to which he also sold the timber he farms, but he shut down the business eight years ago following a government ban on buying conifer (Fokienia spp.) species from Laos, a practice that made up a core part of his business.
Now he sells to traders; they tend to harvest an entire species in bulk, although just one of his chinaberry trees can sell for more than $2,000.
The timber is transported down from the mountains before being processed in factories or sold to markets.
“Now I sell the trees to anyone who wants to buy them,” Thanh says. “The traders knock on my door asking for wood all the time. When the trees are ready for harvesting, I just tell the traders when they pass by. The buyers are Vietnamese — there have been no Chinese buyers.”
It’s not just traders who pay his farm a visit, though. Drug addiction, especially to crystal meth, afflicts many of the poorer ethnic-minority communities in mountainous areas of Vietnam according to domestic media reports. Thanh claims it has also affected his business.
“Thieves often try to cut down clove trees,” Thanh said, “and drug addicts come in to steal the wood too.”
When legitimate traders visit, though, Thanh and his wife say that they follow due process.
“After we sell the timber to traders, we give them a written confirmation that the timber comes from our farm,” Vu Thi Lan said. “Then the traders deliver the timber to a forest ranger who knows all the timber farmers. The ranger verifies that the timber comes from the area and issues them a certificate of origin.”
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If too many production companies come in, and pay a higher price to farmers, they will be incentivising logging, and native trees would then be more likely to be cut down.
Atanu Dey, chief executive officer, Nghe An Wood Processing Plant
Small-scale approach
Many small-scale timber farmers, much like Lan and Thanh, also provide timber to large-scale operations such as Nghe An Wood Processing Plant.
Around six hours east of Muong Xen, the plant is surrounded by a sea of acacia tree plantations and, according to the company’s website, is the largest plant in Southeast Asia manufacturing the plywood panels known as medium-density fiberboard, or MDF.
Around 20 local suppliers cultivate acacia trees, on a seven-year growth cycle, as opposed to cutting down native forest, and seemingly endless piles of their trunks can be seen upon entering the factory grounds.
The plant has only been operating for two years and, despite accusations of dumping environmentally damaging waste water into local canals and reservoirs — an issue it says has long been fixed — the setup represents a genuine attempt a creating a sustainable model of farming timber.
Even the company’s CEO, Atanu Dey, says that if other wood-processing factories move to the area there may be an increased threat to native forest.
“There is a risk of illegal logging,” Dey said. “If too many production companies come in, and pay a higher price to farmers, they will be incentivising logging, and native trees would then be more likely to be cut down.”
Seventy percent of the plant’s processed wood is sold on the domestic market. The rest, according to Dey, is “sent to India, Malaysia, and some to China.”
Domestically, the company sells mainly to furniture companies in large cities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. It also issues certification of origin for all the wood sold.
But a visit to a town full of the kind of companies the plant sells to reveals that such protections are a futile attempt to prevent illegal logging.
A village of wood
In Dong Ky, a traditional wood-carving village 45 minutes outside Hanoi, hundreds of stores sell ornately crafted furniture — some for as much as $12,000. An immense market of storefronts offers a variety of species, including vulnerable species of rosewood (Dalbergia spp.) from Laos and Cambodia, along with timber from Cameroon, South Africa and South America.
The bustling trade in Dong Ky is part of a significant nationwide industry: Vietnam’s overall timber and wood furniture exports were worth $7.3 billion in 2016, according to the Forestry General Directorate. That figure reflects the high value placed on some species being sold.
Siamese rosewood (Dalbergia cochinchinensis), for example, is one of the most valuable species of tree in the world. A single, ornately carved bedpost has been known to sell for as much as $1 million in Shanghai.
Such tantalising opportunities for profit have also led to the devastation of rosewood forests in Southeast Asia, resulted in a vulnerable rating on the IUCN’s Red List of threatened species.
This story was published with permission from Mongabay.com. Read the full story.
