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Imports
of logs from Equatorial Guinea declared by China
Source: China Customs
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It is unclear whether the resumption in China's imports from Equatorial Guinea during 2010 reflects a relaxation of that ban or logs from Gabon being routed via Equatorial Guinea to evade a prohibition introduced earlier in the year by that country's new President concerning the export of logs. Either way, all okoumé logs which China imports are likely to be illegal. Consequently furniture, plywood or other wood-based products which have been made in China at least partly from okoumé are likely to be illegal - (China imports a negligble quantity of sawn wood, veneer or plywood from the range states of okoumé). Equatorial Guinea (formerly a Spanish colony) is one of Africa's newly oil-rich dictatorships. Its offshore oilfields are dominated by the USA. China has been able to gain lead position concerning the country's unexploited oilfields on mainland Rio Muni without attracting US attention through its forest-related and construction activities in that province. Those construction activities include road improvements - to facilitate / subsidise timber exports to China. Rio Muni's forest is rich in Okoumé. Logs should by law account for a minority of the country's timber exports. However, since the mid-1990s - when China became actively interested in Equatorial Guinea's forests, logs have accounted for the great majority of those exports. On average, China has accounted for two thirds of the country's timber exports during the last few years. China's purchases have caused the legal limit for national log production, 450,000m3/year, to have been exceeded by as much as 50% in some recent years. China has offered no compensation for this clearly unsustainable and illegal trade. Since the mid-1990s and until the log export ban of 2008, the logging sector was dominated by Rimbunan Hijau (as Shimmer via Mafrica) - China's leading supplier of tropical (and, to a lesser extent Russian) logs. Rimbunan Hijau has access to a dozen or more concessions totalling in excess of 300,000ha (almost 20% of the 1.7mi ha available; the company claims that it owns 400,000ha). It acts as subcontractor to designated concessionaires (who include the President's family) - avoiding direct responsibility for preparing and adhering to credible forest management plans, and gaining immunity from effective prosecution. It accounts for over half the country's log production and is therefore logging at rate roughly five times greater than the average for the country's other logging companies. It accounts for roughly 70% of the country's annual production limit and logs account for almost all its log exports. This indicates that Rimbunan Hijau's timber exports (and China's imports) from Equatorial Guinea (as elsewhere) should be deemed illegal. Rimbunan Hijau is understood to have threatened to stop logging if the government of Equatorial Guinea refuses to permit it to cut trees of diameter less than the current legal minimum (60cm). This tends to confirm that Rimbunan Hijau and presumably others were logging at rates substantially in excess of the maximum for sustainable forest management. The EU-funded CUREF project (now complete) provided an excellent basis for sound management of Equatorial Guinea's forests. INDEFOR, which has legal jurisdiction over national parks and logging concessions, has received no operating budget for some years - despite oil-rich Equatorial Guinea having one of the highest GDP/person ratios in Africa. INDEFOR is therefore largely unable to take forward the work of CUREF. Prior to the ban, so exhausted were Equatorial Guinea's forests that export-oriented logging increasingly threatened a number of protected areas (notably the Monte Alén - Monte Mitra region - an important biodiversity hotspot). Equatorial Guinea tends to be ignored by trade organisations despite it epitomising much of what is rotten in tropical timber production - and what, by extension, is holding back the tropical timber industry from realising its full potential. It is not a member of the ITTO but is a Party to CITES. Given the power of Rimbunan Hijau and the failure of the government to manage its forest sustainably - perhaps the only way to protect the country's forest is a CITES Appendix II listing for Aucoumea klaineana (Okoumé). Such a listing would restrict the total imports of this species by importing countries' (including China) to a level which will not be detrimental to the role of this species in its ecosystem.
Other related reading: "The Forests of Equatorial Guinea in 2008" Observatoire des Forêts d'Afrique Centrale "Bilan Économique 2002" Ministère de la Planification et du Développement Économique Republique de Guinée Équatoriale "Paysage Monte Alén-Monts de Cristal (Etat des Forêts 2006)" CARPE "USDA-Forest Service Technical Assistance Trip: In Support to USAID Central African Regional Program for the Environment" John E Palmer "Conservation de la Biodiversité Forestière en Afrique Centrale Atlantique: le Réseau d'Aires Protégées - Est-il Adéquat?" Bois et Forêts des Tropiques, 2001 No 268 "Equatorial Guinea" OECD "Republic of Equatorial Guinea: Selected Issues and Statistical Appendix" IMF 2006 "El Estudio de Perspectivas del Sector Forestal en África - La República Guinea Ecuatorial" FOSA 2001 |
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Copyright
globaltimber.org.uk
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