0.13 Natural capital: forestry  (Page 12/14)

The evolution of the international market for tropical hardwoods can be best understood by considering the two most salient features of the postwar history of trade in this product. Table 13-1 shows the pattern of tropical hardwood trade by volume (in thousands of M ³ ) over the past few decades, by region. In 1977, Asia accounted for 82% of all exports. Malaysia and Indonesia together comprised 94% of Asian exports and 77% of world exports. By 2007, Asian exports were 74% of total world trade, while the share of Malaysia and Indonesia in the world total was 62.5% African exports were but 14% of the total in both in 1977 and 2007. Exports from Latin America were neglable in 1977, but notable by 2007.

Table 13-2 portrays the composition and total value of world trade in tropical hardwoods in 2003 and 2007. Total world exports reached $15.7 billion in 2003, and climbed sharply to $25.6 billion by 2007. Interestingly, by the year 2007, average unit export values for African tropical logs reached $199 per M ³ , versus only $131 in Asia and $127 in Latin America. This development most likely resisted from a shift in European, Japanese and American consumers preferences toward African wood.

A noteworthy feature of Table 13-1 is the relatively small (but growing) share of Latin America in international trade in tropical hardwoods, in spite of the huge expanse of Amazonian tropical forest. In 1977, Latin America accounted for less than 1/10 of 1 percent, by 2007 this figure reached 10%.

While the Amazonian forest includes parts of Colombia, Peru, Venezuela and Bolivia, the forest lies primarily in Brazil. Brazilian exports of tropical timber have not been commensurate with the size of that nation’s forest estate. The small share of tropical hardwood exports come from the Amazonian forest has been largely due to two principal factors.

1. The inaccessibility of much of Amazonian forest resources, relative to East Asia and West Africa. This inaccessibility is due not only to the enormous size of the forest, but to lack of transport infrastructure that would enable harvested logs to be shipped or floated to ports or to central processing facilities. While logs have often been floated down rivers in East Asia and parts of West Africa, this is much less feasible in the Amazon basin, where rivers are typically much longer than in the other regions (especially East Asia). Also, some logs are “floaters” and some are “sinkers”. While most tropical hardwoods have a specific gravity that allows them to float, a log that is too long in the water suffers sharp downgrades in quality, and water absorption over time causes many to sink. Specific gravity is the ratio of the density of a material (logs) to the density of water at a specified temperature (usually expressed as 4 degrees centigrade). Floaters become sinkers when wood swells when damp. The swelling is due to the presence of atoms (hydroxyl group of atoms) which absorb water (and release water when timber dries).
2. The per hectare richness and density of commercial species in most of the Amazonian tropical forests is inferior to that of the more bountiful tropical forests of East Asia and much of West Africa. Nevertheless, deforestation of Brazil’s tropical forests has been occurring at very high rates over the past three decades, as noted below. As we shall note, harvest of tropical wood for export has one of the causes, but not the primary cause.