A Predator in Brazil’s Forest
The arrival of three big Asian timber companies in Brazil’s Amazon rain forest has raised serious concerns in the global environmental movement. The reason is the sullied reputations of China’s Fortune Timber Co. and Malaysia’s WTK Group and Samling Corp., all three considered by the Rain Forest Action Network to be among the world’s most voraciously destructive logging forces. The Brazilian government should need no fact other than this to put in place--finally--a strong regulatory system for logging by both domestic companies and outsiders.
The record of these companies throughout the Far East is one of wasteful devastation. In the Philippines, hilly timberland has been scraped bare. Over 20 years, their operations in Cambodia have damaged almost 50% of the country’s forest cover. Samling, working in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on Borneo, is felling timber at the fastest rate on the planet, the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency reports. Even though the deforestation in Asia outstrips that in other continents, none are exempt. In Africa, jungle land has been lost in Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Senegal, Benin and the Ivory Coast. Now, timber companies are moving on to Cameroon, Zaire, Gabon and the Central African Republic.
The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that a 10th of the world’s tropical forest was destroyed in the 1980s and only 1% was replaced by plantings. The area of devastated forest worldwide is equivalent in size to France, Germany, Italy and Britain combined.
The Amazon rain forest is still 90% intact, but acreage is disappearing at an alarming rate. Logging now is the foremost destructive force in the Amazon, which was ravaged earlier by mining, road building and other development. During 1994, almost 6,000 square miles of the Brazilian forest was cut. Now with the WTK Group’s purchase of 741,300 acres near the Amazon city of Manaus, the threat multiplies.
Current environmental protection laws in Brazil are state of the art. The problem lies in enforcement, out in the forest itself. Even the head of Brazil’s environmental agency acknowledges that its inspectors are too few and that too many are corrupt.
A crucial environment is at risk, one whose wonders and benefits are still being discovered. Brazil--and the world--can ill-afford its loss.
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