Vietnam’s Forest of Hypocrisy

An international conference on the depletion of rainforests was just held in, of all places, Hanoi:

The loss of these biodiversity hot spots, much of it driven by the illegal timber trade and the growth of oil palm, biofuel and rubber plantations, is worsening global warming, species loss and poverty, they said….

Over-logging in Southeast Asia caused 19 percent of global rainforest loss in 2005, Myers said, compared to cattle ranching -- once a leading cause, mainly in South America -- which now caused five percent of world losses.

The rapid growth of palm oil and other plantations accounted for 22 percent, and slash-and-burn farming, unsustainable as more poor people exploit fast-shrinking forests, caused 54 percent of rainforest destruction, he [Oxford University's Professor Norman Myers, keynote speaker at the Asia-Pacific Forestry Week conference in Hanoi] said….

Ecologists stress that new forests in China, India and Vietnam are man-made plantations lacking high varieties of plant and animal species.

"Many plantations, in terms of biodiversity, are green concrete," said Peter Walpole, head of the non-profit Asia Forest Network….

"The history of logging in Southeast Asia has been under the auspices of the military and of political families," Walpole said. "If you look at how Cambodia has been logged, this cannot happen without military acknowledgement….

Vietnam was named as a major hub for illegally-logged timber from neighbouring Laos in a recent report by Britain's Environmental Investigation Agency and Indonesian group Telapak -- a claim Hanoi has strenuously denied.

The denuding of Laos’ forests is, in fact, financed by Vietnamese officials, and from other countries, profiting from its control of enterprises.

"Vietnam's booming economy and demand for cheap furniture in the West is driving rapid deforestation" in Laos, Julian Newman of the Britain-based Environmental Investigation Agency said at a news conference.

The group showed a video of fleets of trucks laden with logs crossing the border into Vietnam from Laos, which has banned the export of logs and sawn timber.

Every year, an estimated 17.6 million cubic feet of logs are smuggled across the border after false documents are produced and bribes paid, the group said….

Posing as investors, EIA staffers met one Thai businessman who bragged of paying bribes to senior Lao military officials to secure timber potentially worth $500 million, the group said.

To add to the irony of this meeting being held in Hanoi, Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister told the conference, in contradiction to Hanoi’s persecution and uprooting of Montegnards in the Central Highlands, that:

As forests were a major source of income for ethnic minority people and helped eradicate hunger and reduce poverty, the Government had in recent years made important efforts to provide use rights over forest resources for local communities. This had resulted in more jobs and boosted incomes for local people, especially ethnic minorities, Hai said.

Last November:

The region, which includes the Central Highlands coffee belt, has been hit hard by storms and floods since early October, killing nearly 200 people, causing property and crop damage of $300 million and delaying the coffee harvest by two weeks.

However, as an expert in Southeast Asian agriculture wrote me, Vietnam having already denuded its own rainforests:

Some of the floods and deaths in the Central Highlands can probably be attributed to the deforestation. A Vietnamese friend of mine [identity obscured to avoid his ID by Hanoi] and has been able to get into the Central Highlands without permission from the communists. He reports widespread deforestation, flooding, erosion, run-off, pollution of streams, and the drying up of wells and streams due to the deforestation. We (myself included) have offered advice to the Vietnamese on how this damage can be mitigated by planting contour hedgerows Vetiver grass (google it), that has roots that go as deep as 13 ft., but to no avail.