As the post-tsunami reconstruction gets going in Japan there seems to be good news at last for the plywood industry of South-east Asia; demand is up and prices have rocketed 30%.
But is this really such good news? Is not this increased demand in danger of creating further human misery by encouraging more illegal logging of protected areas?
The tsunami in Japan shocked me, not least because of the ready availability of images of the scale of the tragedy. In contrast the tsunami that hit Aceh, Indonesia in 2004 went almost unreported at the time, yet the death toll ended up being many times higher.
Yet even in poverty-stricken Aceh, as rebuilding efforts finally got going, the province bravely tried to prevent more human tragedy from illegal logging by imposing a logging moratorium throughout the province.
If underdeveloped, conflict-ridden Aceh tried to do the right thing in 2007, cannot Japan follow their example and require at least independently verified legal timber for reconstruction? If not, I fear Japan will be inadvertently causing yet more human tragedy in the region by indiscriminately importing timber, legal or not.
At least now there are many more sources of independently verified legal tropical timber under schemes such as the Indonesian Timber Legality Assurance System.
Andy Roby
Multi-stakeholder Forestry Programme UK co-director and FLEGT VPA facilitator
Jakarta
