Myanmar forest-cutting continues despite government efforts
Schoolchildren walk past a timber yard in Wuntho, northern Sagaing division, Myanmar, June 27. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, from 2010 to 2015, Myanmar had the third-largest forest loss in the world, equivalent to an annual loss of 546,000 hectares. Myanmar is struggling to stop illegal logging that has erased one-quarter of the country’s valuable forests in a generation. (AP/Gemunu Amarasinghe)
The hills of northern Myanmar's Sagaing region were so legendarily thick with forests that in the days of kings, condemned criminals were ordered into the woods as a death sentence. Today illegal logging has left vast swaths of bare patches, with only a handful of old-growth stands.
Despite a temporary ban on all logging by the Southeast Asian country's new government, the Associated Press found in a trip to the remote region that loggers are still cutting down some of the remaining old trees. The AP also saw loggers illegally chopping up the wood from already felled trees for transportation and sale. Piles of such wood have been confiscated by the government, but villagers said officials can be bribed to let it through.
Massive amounts of teak, rosewood and other hardwoods have been illegally cut and exported from Myanmar since 2011. Much of that wood was stripped from the Sagaing region, floated on the Irrawaddy River and transported to neighboring China and India.
Myanmar has lost more than a quarter of its forests since 1990, according to the UN The losses have been greatest in the north, in Sagaing and neighboring Shan and Kachin states. The pace of deforestation had increased under the last government, though it banned timber exports in 2014.
"Logging companies usually chop down trees more than they actually are permitted," said Min Min, a farmer and environmental activist who previously worked transporting illegally cut logs. "According to my experience, I've never seen the government take action against the companies chopping down any size of trees they wanted."
Four activists in Sagaing told The Associated Press that logging appeared to be continuing on a small scale despite the temporary ban, based on truckloads of lumber they have seen being transported. This is the rainy season in Myanmar, and an off period for the illegal timber trade in any case.
Those arrested have included members of Myanmar's military, which no longer rules the country but remains powerful. Burmese media reported last week that nearly three tons of rosewood were seized from a military vehicle in Sagaing.
This summer, AP reporters rode jeeps and motorbikes for 20 hours over rough, muddy roads to reach villages in northern Sagaing, meeting former illegal loggers, local villagers and elephant keepers. Despite its remoteness, vast swaths of hillsides and valleys were bald patches.
Young trees, perhaps 10 years old, stand near the stumps of ancestors that were clearly many times larger. A few villages have managed to cling to old-growth stands in small community forests, but that is all.
"We used to be so afraid of coming to the forest alone because it was too forested," said Aung Moe Kyaw, a local environmental activist. "Now, as you see, it is bald and no more big trees. The big trees are all gone now."
Logging in Sagaing has traditionally been done with the help of elephants, and while that work has continued, heavy equipment is used much more commonly.
"If the logging was only done by the government and pulled logs by elephant, deforestation wouldn't be that bad," said Than Lwin, an elephant trainer, showing off two of the six elephants that work hauling felled tree trunks that weigh up to five tons. "We see that logging companies are chopping down trees as much as they want."
Mountains of recently cut illegal timber worth millions of dollars lie in villages across the region; most of the timber the AP team saw was rosewood, coveted in China and elsewhere for its natural red color. Activists say the wood has been seized by the government mostly since late 2015, but that loggers commonly have been able to get it back by bribing officials.
The AP team traveling witnessed loggers cutting wood outside Katha, a Sagaing town that is a transit hub for the trade. An activist traveling with the journalists said the logging was illegal and contacted forest department officials, who detained the loggers and seized their equipment.
The wood-cutting operation had been set up near a mountain far from the nearest village. Because exporting lumber rather than raw timber is not illegal, clandestine wood-cutting is a way to circumvent the law.
Villagers learned of the operation and informed the activist. The leader of the logging crew looked nervous when the activists and journalists arrived. When asked where he got the timber, he said his brother recently gave him the leftover logs, and that they were only for home use.
Local environmental activists working under the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade, which supports efforts to combat illegal logging in developing countries, say much illegally cut timber is hauled to Katha, transported on the Irrawaddy and sent on various paths through Kachin state and the Mandalay region before it reaches China's western Yunan province. They say bribes allow illegal loads to pass official gates.
Min Min said a former boss would bribe police and forest department officials ahead of time, so that when Min Min arrived at the gate, the officials would let him go without checking his truck.
"The officials protect us for giving bribes, and sometimes they even come with us on the truck to show us the way to get to our final destination," he said.
Myo Min, national director of the forestry department, said Thursday the government is trying to stop corruption.
"There are many individual bribery cases but not all staff from the forest department is involved," he said. "... We have taken action against bribe-taking staff in the past and are still working on it now."
Myanmar police referred questions about corruption to the forestry department.
Myo Min said the department has taken action against staff in the Katha district in the past. But the district's director, Soe Tint, denied that officials have cooperated in illegal logging.
"Because of the Chinese demand for hardwood, there could be illegal logging cooperation among businessmen," he said.
How big is Myanmar's smuggling? From 2011 to 2014, Myanmar reported $2.83 billion in exports of hardwood in the rough, while trading partners reported imports of $5.57 billion. Illegal logging is likely to account for some of that $2.74 billion discrepancy. Other timber-cutting is probably absent from any country's record-keeping.
India and China are by far the biggest consumers. From 2011 to 2015, the two countries collectively imported about six times more Myanmar teak and rosewood than the rest of the world combined.
"Most of illegal timber is transported to China through Kachin state," said Khon Ja of the activist group Kachin Peace Network. "We have witnessed how they [illegal loggers] bribe military officers and civil officers throughout the way when they carried out the illegal timber.
"It is an unnecessarily great loss. The valuable natural resources are sold for a penny," she added.
From 2010 to 2015, Myanmar had the third-largest forest loss in the world, equivalent to an annual loss of 546,000 hectares (2,100 square miles), according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
In 2011, Myanmar's longtime military rulers gave way to a military-backed but quasi-civilian government led by President Thein Sein that ruled until earlier this year. That government is credited with initiating a series of political reforms and helping the country emerge from decades of international isolation, but one side effect of that new openness was that Myanmar's vast natural resources became easier to exploit.
"The worst period was under President Thein Sein's administration," said Than Hlaing, a Sagaing regional lawmaker. "The government itself was cooperating with the businessmen. The illegal logging was widespread in our region."
Since 2014, the government has banned the export of raw timber logs to protect old-growth forests. In May, the new elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi announced a nationwide logging ban for this fiscal year, which ends March 31.
The forest department compound in Katha is now home to a fleet of trucks, buses and vans that the government has seized from illegal loggers since late last year.
Myo Min, the forestry director, said last month that the government has seized more than 16,000 tons of illegally cut logs since April, when the current government took office and that more than 1,000 criminal cases have been filed in that time. He said that continues work that began toward the end of previous government, which seized 30,000 tons of logs and filed more than 2,200 criminal cases in its last fiscal year.
At least some illegal loggers are being prosecuted, including one whom AP reporters met in Wuntho village shortly after his release from prison, where he had spent four months.
Corruption and weak law enforcement remain obstacles.
"The illegal loggers are so smart and professional, as they have been doing it for a long time," said Min Naung, a Lower House lawmaker and a member of the Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation Committee. "They know how to transport illegal logs when and where, and they definitely know the weaknesses of the government. They know how to avoid being arrested."
He said some officials are still taking bribes, "even if it's less," and that the forest department lacks muscle. "They don't have enough people to seize logging sites and people because it can be dangerous for them, and they have no weapons but pens," he said.
A forest department worker in Sagaing was recently killed by illegal loggers. "We could do nothing about it and we were really sad what happened to him. We couldn't protect him," Min Naung said.
Soe Tint, the forest official, said that although the killing was the first of its kind in the district, his workers are often threatened or even harmed, and they frequently ask for backup from police.
Though local villagers have sometimes taken part in illegal logging, they say they've received virtually none of the proceeds. And they say the biggest operators rely on loggers from other regions.
Even by the standards of Myanmar, one of Asia's poorest countries, northern Sagaing is impoverished and remote. The roads are too poor for most people to travel frequently. Villagers are heavily dependent on farming, but they lack irrigation, and harvest food from the forest outside of the growing season. Villages typically have only a primary school, so further education is out of the question for most children.
"It has been always difficult for us to stop illegal loggers," said Aung Moe Kyaw, the activist. "They have a good deal with the authorities from different levels and they benefit from it, but villagers who live by the forests are so poor."
At the same time, he said, simply having members of Parliament pay attention to the issue is an improvement.
"If the new government could protect these forests for a few years," he said, "it would actually give the chance for these forests to live."
Six billion dollar timber c... by on Scribd
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Timber smuggling between Myanmar and China slumps, says EIA
The slump represents an opportunity for the two countries to end the illegal trade once and for all, the EIA said, although Myanmar timber industry officials are not optimistic.
Research from the UK-based non-profit published last September found that the illicit timber trade between the two countries was nearing an all-time high.
Almost half a billion dollars worth of illegal timber – 900,000 cubic metres – crossed the border between Myanmar’s Kachin State and China’s Yunnan province in 2014, according to the EIA.
But field observations since the September 2015 report show a dramatic fall in the trade across official and unofficial crossing points, the organisation reported this week.
Sawmills in Yunnan border towns have closed due to lack of new logs from the Kachin State forests, local sources told the EIA. No new logs have been seen for months, the sources said.
The report suggests several potential drivers for the drop in smuggling. Myanmar’s arrest of 155 Chinese loggers in January 2015 and the EIA’s report from September of that year had raised political awareness, it said. A supply glut in the illegal timber trade and China’s economic slowdown were also factors.
Regardless of the reason, the sharp slump is “an opportunity for Myanmar and China to resolve the issue and agree that the border should be closed to timber trade”, said the organisation’s campaigns director Julian Newman.
The EIA is advocating that China formally respect the export ban, and previously recommended that Myanmar’s government send an official request to that effect.
“We’ll be trying to re-engage with the new [National League for Democracy] government,” Mr Newman said.
Under Myanmar law, exports of raw timber have been banned since 2014. Cross-border trade is forbidden, but remains a serious issue. Myanmar lost 1.7 million hectares of forest cover from 2001 to 2013, and the speed of deforestation has doubled, said the EIA in its September report.
The illegal trade also provides China with raw timber at a low price. This makes it hard for Myanmar’s domestic industry – which offers finished timber products – to compete, said U Barber Cho, a secretary general at the Myanmar Timber Merchants Association.
China has made no effort to respect Myanmar’s export ban, he added.
“We get the impression China is looking to regulate the trade rather than stop it,” Mr Newman said. China’s efforts to promote legal trade include proposals to set up timber trading and processing parks in Myanmar, which Myanmar has rejected, according to the EIA release.
The advocacy group is concerned that without a resolution the illegal trade will simply start up again.
U Barber Cho said the decrease in smuggling is likely due to market-based and economic factors. An oversupply of timber to China and to a lesser extent that country’s slowing economy are the main reasons, he said. The supply glut issue made a permanent decrease in illegal timber trading unlikely, he added.
Earlier lulls in illegal timber trading have also proved temporary, the EIA said.
The Yunnan government in 2005 promised to only allow legal trade. This lowered trade from 1 million m3 a year in 2005 to just 270,000m3 in 2008, according to the EIA. By 2014 the volumes had returned to peak levels, the organisation said.
Mr Newman suspects that once existing stockpiles are exhausted the incentive to restart the illegal trade will increase.
Resolving the issue permanently will also require political resolution in Kachin State, as well as China’s recognition of the ban on timber trade, U Barber Cho said.
Most wood is cut or transported through Kachin State, an area of conflict between ethnic groups and Myanmar’s government and military. The government has previously blamed ethnic groups for the illegal logging problem, accusing them of exploiting trade for profits.
U Barber Cho said this long-standing issue between the Union and Kachin State governments would have to be tackled before timber smuggling is stopped, meaning hopes for an end to the illegal trade are not high.
Hiatus in timber smuggling from Myanmar to China
Read the Burmese language version herePDF.
Monitoring of key crossing points along the Myanmar-China border by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) reveals a sharp downturn in the volume of illegal timber being smuggled between the two countries during the past six months.
In September 2015, EIA released the report Organised Chaos, which documented surging illicit trade in logs via the land border between Myanmar’s Kachin State and China’s Yunnan Province, reaching 900,000 m3 of wood in 2014, worth almost half a billion dollars.
The report exposed how powerful business syndicates were colluding with the Burmese military and ethnic political groups to violate Myanmar’s forest laws, which ban overland trade in timber and the export of raw logs. It also highlighted the case of 155 Chinese labourers arrested by the Burmese military in January 2015 at a logging site inside Kachin. The Chinese nationals were initially sentenced to life imprisonment, leading to diplomatic tension between the two countries and a subsequent presidential pardon for the loggers.
Field observations by EIA since the report launch indicate that the flow of timber across the border has fallen dramatically. One year ago, EIA documented long lines of trucks queuing to carry valuable logs across the border. This year only small amounts of precious woods are being smuggled via backroads on motorbikes or passenger vehicles.
At the N’bapa-Banling unofficial crossing, controlled by a major syndicate called BDYA and one of the busiest routes last year, the trade has come to a virtual halt. Further north at the Kambaiti-Houqiao official border point, the same situation was observed.
Most of the arrested Chinese loggers come from Houqiao and upon their return home after being released last July they were told by local authorities not to return to Myanmar for the rest of the year. Many also lost money when their trucks and equipment were confiscated and will not risk crossing the border again. In the border town of Pianma, in northern Yunnan, previously a major storage area for logs cut from the unique forests of north Kachin, local sources said no new logs had been seen for months, leading to the closure of some of the town’s sawmills.
A combination of factors is likely responsible for the timber smuggling slowdown. EIA’s report, coupled with the publicity over the 155 Chinese loggers, brought significant political attention to the problem. In addition, the huge volumes of timber which flowed across the border over the past few years created a glut in the market, especially in valuable rosewood species, the price of which had fallen. When EIA visited the key log storage areas of Ruili and Nongdao in southern Yunnan last July, large stockpiles of rosewood and teak were seen, with many of the rosewood stocks dating from 2014. Other contributory factors include the economic slowdown in China and Myanmar’s General Election last November.
Faith Doherty, Team Leader of EIA’s Forest Campaign, said: “The sharp fall in timber volumes being smuggled into China provides a much-needed breathing space for the precious forests of Myanmar.
“For too long, the authorities in both countries have turned a blind eye to this backdoor route for logs illegally cut in Myanmar to feed China’s massive wood-processing sector. What is needed now is for both countries to cooperate on achieving a permanent closure of the border to timber trade. An important first step would be for China to formally recognise its neighbour’s export ban on logs.”
Previous reductions in timber flows have proved temporary. After the trade reached one million m3 a year in 2005, the Yunnan provincial government largely halted the trade and issued regulations promising to only allow legal trade. By 2008, the volume had fallen to just 270,000 m3 a year but the reduction was not sustained and by 2014 trade had returned to peak levels.
During 2015 there were a series of bilateral discussions between forestry officials from Myanmar and China as a precursor to a planned Memorandum of Understanding, yet these meetings reveal divergent views. While Myanmar is calling for cooperation to stop the illegal timber trade, China’s stance is to promote legal trade, including proposals to set up timber trading and processing parks in Myanmar, a move which has so far been rebuffed by its neighbour.
Without formal measures to permanently halt timber trade across the border it could quickly resume once the log piles on the Chinese side of the border dwindle and timber prices rise again due to scarcity. One Chinese timber businessman, based in Pianma, has told the media he expected the local government to lift controls on timber imports in March.
EIA News Update on Myanmar to China Timber Flows Burmese Lang Version FINAL by Let's Save Myanmar on Scribd
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