Laos exported 1.4 million cubic meters of timber to Vietnam and China in 2013, more than 10 times the country’s official volume count, according to a leaked World Wildlife Foundation report released online by the Environmental Investigation Agency.
The report, “Assessment of Scope of Illegal Logging in Laos and Associated Transboundary Timber Trade,” dated June 2015, concluded that the “sheer volume of undocumented timber involved suggests” that the harvesting was done by large companies permitted to legally assemble in the extraction areas.
The majority of the logging operations in Laos are connected to forest clearance for infrastructure projects—dams, roads, mining and agricultural plantations, for example. These projects have received a dramatic uptick in investment from Chinese and Vietnamese sources in the past decade, according to the report, and the trend correlates with the volume of undocumented timber exported to those countries.
Combined, China and Vietnam receive 96 percent of Laos’ wood exports. China is the largest recipient of timber from Laos by value, recording $1 billion in imports in 2014. In 2008, the country imported $44.7 million of timber.
“The prognosis for the forests of Laos is bleak,” said EIA Senior Forest Campaigner Jago Wadley in a statement. “Industrial-scale illegal logging under the guise of special projects is routine and conducted by untouchable companies, abetted by corruption.”
