How Malaysia Smuggles Endangered Wood
Indonesia is suffering rampant illegal logging which threatens to destroy its precious forests within a few years, and this devastation is being fuelled by uncontrolled demand for cheap tropical timber in consuming countries.
Hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal Indonesian timber are estimated to be entering neighbouring Malaysia each year, providing cheap raw materials to a voracious wood industry which can no longer be sustained by the country’s own dwindling forest estate.
One particularly vulnerable tree species being illegally logged in Indonesia’s precious National Parks is ramin, a valuable blond hardwood. In an attempt to garner the support of the world community in combating illegal ramin trade, in 2001 the Government of Indonesia listed ramin on an international convention designed to control the trade in endangered species – the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
Since 2001 the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Telapak have repeatedly exposed how, despite being a signatory to CITES, Malaysia is wilfully failing to uphold its international commitments, and that illegal Indonesian ramin continues to be traded through the country with impunity.
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