Indochina = Vietnam [+Cambodia +Laos]
Corruption, Crime Undercut Cambodian, Lao Forest Protection Efforts-Report
RFA | 24 June 2016
Trucks loaded with timber wait at Cambodian Bavet border post with Vietnam, in file photo. AFP
The campaign to save Asia’s dwindling stock of Siamese rosewood
trees by giving the species enhanced international protection has been
tripped up by corruption and criminal activity in Laos and Cambodia,
according to a new report issued Friday.
According to the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency
(EIA), exports of the wood by Laos and Cambodia have more than
outstripped the largest known wild stock of the trees since the U.N.
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)
recognized the trees’ plight.
“Laos and Cambodia have systemically disregarded the most basic legal
safeguards of U.N. trade rules for endangered species in ways that
seriously undermine the credibility of CITES, while edging Siamese
rosewood ever closer to extinction,” said EIA Senior Forest Campaigner
Jago Wadley.
“CITES intervention is urgently required.”
In March 2013, CITES placed Siamese rosewood on its Appendix II,
meaning it is legal for CITES signatories to buy and sell the wood, but
the species could face extinction unless trade is closely controlled.
Red alert on rosewood
Laos and Cambodia are CITES signatories, but EIA says they have
failed to take the steps necessary under CITES to prevent
over-exploitation of the species such as making an inventory of the
trees or properly controlling permits to harvest the trees.
The EIA report “Red Alert: How fraudulent Siamese rosewood exports
from Laos and Cambodia are undermining CITES protection,” covers the
mid-2013 – December 2014 time period, the most recent data available.
The EIA found that Cambodia has either incorrectly or illegitimately
issued CITES export permits for most of the 12,000 square meters of
Siamese rosewood exported between June 2013 and December 2014.
Laos exported 63,500 square meters of Siamese rosewood in 2013 and
2014, the EIA said. That is more than the entire known remaining wild
stock of the trees in Thailand, where only 80,000 to 100,000 Siamese
rosewood trees remain in natural stands in the country as of 2011,
amounting to about 63,500 square meters of harvestable timber.
Although some rosewood may be legally harvested in Laos from forest
conversion projects such as dam building, the infrastructure projects
have consistently been used to launder illegally logged timber.
In a further threat to stocks of rosewood, Laotian villagers allege
that the state-owned electricity provider Electricite du Laos routinely
demands illegally logged Siamese rosewood as payment for hooking up
villagers to the national grid.
State-sponsored crime
In March 2014, a rosewood trader in China offered to sell EIA
undercover investigators numerous export permits issued by Laos’ CITES
Management Authority, covering thousands of cubic meters of rosewood
logs. The permits could be applied to any wood from anywhere and then
exported into China where rosewood is prized for use in copies of
traditional furniture.
“All the indicators betray a governance culture where the rule of law
is replaced by forms of state-sponsored crime in key ministries which
influence the implementation of UN treaties such as CITES,” Wadley said.
In Phnom Penh, Ministry of Environment spokesman Sao Sopheap rejected
the EIA report, saying Cambodia has actively worked to curtail illegal
logging by setting up a task force and creating protected zones in
forests.
“The government has reduced the duration of economic land concession from 90 years to 50 years,” he told RFA’s Khmer Service.
RFA was unable to reach the Cambodian Ministry of Agriculture, the
agency directly responsible for implementing CITES commitments.
The Lao government, which has unveiled a new package of logging and
timber export bans, had no immediate comment on Friday’s report.
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