The Chinese government is drafting a guideline to cutback on illegal logging in and promote sustainable development of overseas forests, but environmentalists have called the draft toothless.
The Chinese government is drafting a guideline to cutback on illegal logging in and promote sustainable development of overseas forests, but environmentalists have called the draft toothless.
The guideline, while it intends to regulate the behaviors of Chinese businesses partaking in the trade of forest products from countries like Myanmar, is voluntary.
The Environmental Investigation Agency, which has published a number of reports in the last three years investigating China's major role in the illegal logging industry, submitted formal comments to the Chinese government recommending the guidelines be replaced with a legally enforceable ban on illegal timber trade into and within China.
"As the world's biggest importer of illegal wood, and in light of extensive irrefutable evidence that Chinese companies are complicit in driving destructive illegal logging and timber smuggling, China needs to move beyond unenforceable voluntary guidelines and take unequivocal actions to prohibit illegal timber," said Jago Wadely, EIA forest campaigner, in a statement.
To read the EIA's most recent report, "China's Criminal and Unsustainable Intervention in Mozambique's Miombo Forests," click here.