Borneo To Be Stripped To Provide Wood For Beijing Olympic Construction

[hatrack]

EDIT

The forest-to-palm-oil deal, one of an array of projects that China said it would develop in Indonesia as part of a $7 billion investment spree last year, illustrates the increasingly symbiotic relationship between China's need for a wide variety of raw materials and its Asian neighbors' readiness to provide them - often at enormous environmental cost.

From Malaysia to Indonesia to Myanmar, many of the once-plentiful forests of Southeast Asia are already gone, stripped legally or illegally, including some in the low-lying lands here in Kalimantan, on the Indonesian side of Borneo. Those that remain, like the towering stands in Anyie's part of the highlands, are ever-pressed, ever-prized and ever more valuable, particularly as China's economy continues to surge. Only half of Borneo's original forests still stand.

Overall, Indonesia says it expects China to invest $30 billion in the next decade, a big infusion of capital that contrasts with the declining investment here and in the region by American companies. Much of that Chinese investment is aimed at the extractive industries, along with infrastructure like refineries, railroads and toll roads to help speed the flow of Indonesia's plentiful coal, oil, gas, timber, and palm oil to China's ports.

On April 19, Indonesia announced that China had placed a $1 billion rush order for 800,000 cubic meters, or 28.2 million cubic feet, of an expensive red- brown hardwood, called merbau, to be used in construction of its sports facilities for the 2008 Olympic Games. Merbau wood, mostly prevalent in Papua's virgin forests, has been illegally logged and shipped to China since the late 1990s, stripping large swaths of forest in the Indonesian province on the western side of the island of New Guinea. The decision to award a $1 billion concession to China would "increase the deforestation of Papua," a place of extraordinary biodiversity, said Elfian Effendy, executive director of Greenomics, an Indonesian environmental watchdog. "It's not sustainable."

EDIT

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/28/news/indo.php

The Chinese government will doubtless expend endless energy and ink to show how "environmentally friendly" the 2008 Olympics will be. Whatever.

[joemurphy]

1. Not good. n/t

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

2. K & R. This whole planet...

...is just one big, giant Easter Island tragedy waiting to happen. And it's gonna be sooner than later.

[Igel]

3. Picture link.

It's not protected in CITES as far as I can tell, so they can do what they want. (Although a google search shows that Indonesia was considering listing merbau, i.e., Instia spp., as appendix III species ... big woop.)

[Delphinus]

4. What good will the money do them?

This poor planet.