Conservation

Japanese fear to loose income. As result of Japan’s strategy to exhaust the Southeast Asian forests before turning to its own sizeable reserves of timber now most of the forest in the accessible areas is gone. Japan imports more wood than any other country in the world. In 1980 it bought 55% of all the round wood, sawn wood, and plywood traded in the world. It also takes 54% of all exports of tropical hardwood, 86% of which come from South and Southeast Asia. Japan takes the lion’s share of the exports from Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines and a large proportion of the export from Thailand — which is nearly out of timber now — and Papua New Guinea. The Malaysian Department of Forestry forecasts that their remaining forests will be exhausted by 1990. The same will be the case with Indonesian forests at the end of the century or sooner. Reafforestation is rare. Concession holders excuse their failure to replant by their leases being too short to offer an incentive. Plantations are being established at only one tenth of the rate at which forest is disappearing.