Forests' illegally destroyed' in Vietnam for furniture

Vast areas of forest are being illegally felled to fuel a demand for cheap furniture in the West, environment watchdogs said today.

Vietnam is taking huge quantities of wood from neighbouring Laos to supply markets in Europe and the United States.

The British-based Environmental Investigation Agency said an estimated 500,000 cubic metres of logs were smuggled across the frontier annually using false documents and bribes.

The group said Thai businesses were also buying illegally cut wood from Laos, which harbours some of the last great forests of mainland Southeast Asia.

“The cost of such unfettered greed is borne by poor rural communities in Laos who are dependent on the forests for their traditional livelihoods,” a spokesman said.

“The ultimate responsibility for his dire state of affairs rests with the consumer markets which import wood products made from stolen timber,” he added.

The EIA said laws now before the US Congress would curb such imports and the EU was taking steps to certify furniture and other forest products as having come from legally procured timber.

The group said Vietnam since the 1990s has taken steps to conserve its own forests while at the same time expanding its wooden furniture production, much of it with illegal timber.

Furniture exports from Vietnam totalled €1.52bn last year, a tenfold increase since 2000.

According to the Vietnamese government, 39% of the exports in 2006 went to the United States, 14% to Japan, 7% to the United Kingdom and 4% each to France and Germany.

“The plundering of Laos’ forests involves high-level corruption and bribery and it is not just Vietnam, which is exploiting its neighbour. Thai and Singapore traders are also cashing in,” the report said.

Posing as investors, EIA staffers met one Thai businessman who bragged of paying bribes to senior Lao military officials to secure wood potentially worth €317m.