The entrance of China into the global capitalist market with the ensuing accelerated expansion of its economy has been marked by a growing hunger for timber. 
The path to industrialization first swallowed the country’s forests. Rampant logging led to the irretrievable loss of China’s natural wealth: accelerated desertification, decline of biodiversity and loss of forests up to the point that there is almost no old-growth left in China. The case of Yichun serves to illustrate the issue. The Guardian’s correspondent Jonathan Watts, reports (1) that in “Yichun, a north-eastern city in Heilongjiang province close to the frozen river border with Siberia, the forests were once so dense that the area was known as the Great Northern Wilderness. But more than fifty years of unsustainable logging have taken their toll. Yichun was classified last year (2008) as one of China's 12 ‘resource-depleted cities.’ ‘We are in a situation where we have no wood to cut. None of the forests are mature enough,’ Dong Zhiyong, former vice-minister in the forestry administration said.”
With the soil exposed to erosion fierce sandstorms have lashed the country while deforestation –especially in the upper reaches of river systems-- has contributed to devastating floods that caused thousands of deaths and millions of displaced people.
In 1998, a sweeping logging ban was established. However, wood consumption still increased, now at the expense of the forests of neighbouring countries (e.g. Burma, Cambodia, Russia) as well as of far away countries such as those in Western Africa, among other.
The need for papermaking resources added to wood demand and as result China launched in 2000 a Fast-growing and High-yielding Timber Plantations Program. The program –part of a wider set of six key programs- was to be established in 18 eastern and southwestern provinces and by 2012 the government aims to have planted an area of 44 million hectares (see WRM Bulletin Nº 85). This has implied land tenure reforms shifting from state-run or collectively owned land to land privatization in a country where farmer population is 1 billion out of a population of 1.5 billion.
The path to industrialization first swallowed the country’s forests. Rampant logging led to the irretrievable loss of China’s natural wealth: accelerated desertification, decline of biodiversity and loss of forests up to the point that there is almost no old-growth left in China. The case of Yichun serves to illustrate the issue. The Guardian’s correspondent Jonathan Watts, reports (1) that in “Yichun, a north-eastern city in Heilongjiang province close to the frozen river border with Siberia, the forests were once so dense that the area was known as the Great Northern Wilderness. But more than fifty years of unsustainable logging have taken their toll. Yichun was classified last year (2008) as one of China's 12 ‘resource-depleted cities.’ ‘We are in a situation where we have no wood to cut. None of the forests are mature enough,’ Dong Zhiyong, former vice-minister in the forestry administration said.”
With the soil exposed to erosion fierce sandstorms have lashed the country while deforestation –especially in the upper reaches of river systems-- has contributed to devastating floods that caused thousands of deaths and millions of displaced people.
In 1998, a sweeping logging ban was established. However, wood consumption still increased, now at the expense of the forests of neighbouring countries (e.g. Burma, Cambodia, Russia) as well as of far away countries such as those in Western Africa, among other.
The need for papermaking resources added to wood demand and as result China launched in 2000 a Fast-growing and High-yielding Timber Plantations Program. The program –part of a wider set of six key programs- was to be established in 18 eastern and southwestern provinces and by 2012 the government aims to have planted an area of 44 million hectares (see WRM Bulletin Nº 85). This has implied land tenure reforms shifting from state-run or collectively owned land to land privatization in a country where farmer population is 1 billion out of a population of 1.5 billion.
SOURCEhttp://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/141/China.html
No comments:
Post a Comment