Do you think that globalization has helped more people understand issues like deforestation and global warning? Does an increased understanding of these issues help people make different choices?
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:
Global market impacts on Asia—Pacific forests in 2020
Andrew Morton1 and Graham Applegate2
The global timber industry has become increasingly interlinked, with trade in forest and wood products continuing to rise. Driving this change are the economic forces that utilize and reward efficient timber producers by securing their access to markets across the globe.
Forest and wood-product international trade was initiated through the middle and latter half of the twentieth century; it was then dominated by the trade of unprocessed log products. Whilst the log trade continues to be an important component of the sector, the real trend increases have been in processed products. Initially this was in sawntimber and pulpwood, but increasingly it is in nearly finished products such as paper and board, and most spectacularly wood-based panels. Wood-based panel trade has increased 800 percent in the last 30 years, and this trend is expected to continue.
Keywords: global market impacts, international trends, forest and wood products, imports/ exports, Asia–Pacific region
Introduction
During the 1980s and 1990s, timber harvested from the tropical dipterocarp forests in Southeast Asia, particularly those in Malaysia and Indonesia, dominated much of the export trade in tropical hardwood logs and plywood products, with countries such as Papua New Guinea (PNG), Solomon Islands, Myanmar and Thailand contributing smaller quantities. From the mid-1990s, three important changes started to occur in the forestry sector in Asia and the Pacific: (1) The beginning of the decline in the production of plywood from the tropical dipterocarp forests, as the easily accessible forests were harvested and reharvested; (2) the commencement of the pulp and paper sector, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia, with large pulpmills constructed in Indonesia in the late 1990s, designed to use mixed tropical hardwood species from the natural forests; and (3) China began its rise as a major importer of wood products. In recent years, as China has emerged as an economic powerhouse, so too has its demand for timber as well as pulp and paper products. China now has a major influence in the market for timber for furniture as well as pulpwood and pulp for its expanding paper production industry.
The major land-use change in the Asia–Pacific region over the past 30 years, and particularly over the past ten years, has been the huge loss of natural forest, with deforestation rates in natural forests in Indonesia (from 1990 to 2000) of 2.1 million hectares per year (Muliastra and Boccucci 2005). The main drivers of deforestation in the Asia–Pacific region are complex and numerous, but what is very noticeable is the expansion of the palm oil industry, with plantations being developed primarily on “converted forest land”. Indonesia now has more than 6.6 million hectares of palm oil plantations with a similar area in Malaysia; expansion is planned in many Asia–Pacific countries as palm oil is widely promoted as a so-called ecofriendly biofuel. There is also an increase in tree plantations containing high value species such as teak, rubber and mahogany, but primarily with fast growing pulpwood species, dominated by acacia and eucalypts many of which are planted on converted forest land.
These negative impacts on the natural forests in Asia and the Pacific over the past 20 years have prompted a number of initiatives designed to minimize negative impacts resulting from poor forest land-use planning and forest management. Some of the initiatives included the introduction in the 1990s of Reduced Impact Logging (RIL) and codes of practice for forest harvesting for improving harvesting practices in the forests of the Asia–Pacific region; how to combat the huge illegal logging industry; the prevention and suppression of forest and peatland fires and how to reduce their occurrence as countries in the region develop their natural resources; the application of criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management; and the use of forest certification and systems to facilitate legal wood supplies and Chain of Custody.