There are many deceptions in the various campaigns against Forestry in Tropical Countries, and this article is full of them, whilst conspicuously devoid of any documented evidence of illegal logging anywhere. The article covers up the fact that the main thrust of the campaign against so-called illegal logging always comes from white countries that themselves produce 60% of the world's forest products and would like to increase their market share at the expense of non-white countries.

This is made explicit in the Australian Parliament’s lower house's debate on 16th August 2012 which approved legislation that will impose restrictions on imports of forest products deemed to derive from illegally logged timber. When introducing the Bill in November 2011 the responsible minister, Mike Kelly, stated “The Illegal Logging Prohibition Bill responds to a significant issue affecting forest communities around the world. The environmental and social costs of illegal logging worldwide have been estimated at approximately US $60 billion per annum”. He offered no evidence for this wholly unfounded estimate, which in any case amounted to only 4% of the value of world timber production, while Australia’s own timber imports are already mostly from accredited firms who have to meet minimum standards.

In the second reading of the Bill, Opposition deputy leader and foreign affairs spokesperson Julie Bishop told parliament the government bill was “all well and good”, but that it raised foreign relations and World Trade Organisation compatibility questions. For example, taxing other countries’ export industries in order to protect one’s own, as proposed by Australia's large trade union the CFMEU's national secretary Michael O’Connor in his support for the Bill, seems contrary to WTO rules. Yet O’Connor claims “thousands of timber, furniture and pulp and paper workers, whose jobs are under threat, are relying on the illegal logging bill to pass without delay... The cost advantage that imported manufactured illegally logged wood products unfairly enjoy over manufactured products that utilise legal timber is conservatively estimated to be 20% of the total cost of production. Wood products represent the second largest sector in Australia’s manufacturing industry and cheap, imported products are costing workers their jobs and killing (sic) their communities".

Actually Australia's Green Party is doing just that to forestry in Tasmania, but that is another story. Some time ago Michael O’Connor’s CFMEU supported the anti-dumping case taken by Kimberley Clark against imports of paper tissue products from Indonesia. It failed. The finding was that low price competition from another Australian producer, not Indonesian exporters, was the source of price pressure on Kimberley Clark. One reason Kimberley Clark could not compete was because its CFMEU workforce was among the highest paid in Australian manufacturing. For CFMEU’s anti-dumping campaigns, in this case paper imports, see http://www.kiroyan-partners.com/credentials/consulting_team.html.).

Meantime a more serious campaign against timber products produced in non-white tropical countries like Indonesia is that of the white countries who are behind the so-called REDD+ programme, which seeks to terminate all timber and oil palm production in countries like Indonesia. Their argument is that REDD (Reducing Emissions from deforestation and degradation) is only applicable to tropical (non-white) countries as apparently timber harvested in say Norway Finland and Germany is white than white, emitting no CO2 at all!

Again the hidden agenda is revealed by FAO data showing that Germany DOUBLED its production of industrial round wood and sawnwood between 1995 and 2010, whilst actually Indonesia reduced its production of its 3 main products (including plywood) (at 46% of Germany 's total production) by 13% (in favour of oil palm trees).

As for the obsession of REDD+ promoters with CO2, virtually all of trees' carbon content (50% by mass) derives from CO2 emissions, while virtually all timber products (wall, roof, window frames, decks) consist of carbon to almost 100%, unlike the steel, concrete, and aluminium building products preferred by Australia's Greens and academic REDD+ promoters (manufacturing aluminium emits 25kg of CO2 per 1 kg - and unlike timber stores no carbon at all).

The above are facts the author of the article sitting in his faculty glasshouse will never acknowledge!

Tom Keen: The 60% figure I quoted is for production data on timber products (excluding pulp and paper) for 2004 from FAO 2005; the whitey’s proportion of pulp and paper production in 2004 was 70%. I leave it to you to update to 2010, but all indicators I know of show those proportions have increased.

What do you mean by deforestation? Although virtually all Australian climate scientists and economists think that non-whites are congenitally stupid, so log trees just for the hell of it, actually the latter are a lot more intelligent than the former, and their so-called deforestation involves replanting to oil-palm or tree plantations or, truly wicked and dumb, for food production. Whereas Tom Keen or Tim Scanlon when hungry just have to waddle into their cars and buy big Macs.

However oil palm trees like new timber plantations and food crops all absorb more atmospheric CO2 per hectare p.a. than native forest more than 30 years old. The really dumb Australian academics who promote REDD+ are incapable of understanding such basic facts (see my paper at Quadrant Online http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet or at my website www.timcurtin.com.)

Tom Keen: it is a fact that REDD+ applies only to non-white countries, and is vigorously prosecuted there by countries like Germany, whose aid agencies including GTZ are hell-bent on preventing timber harvesting in countries like Laos, while funded by their own companies logging merrily all the way to the bank themselves. There are NO REDD+ programmes in USA, UK, Germany on ANY white pela country, even though if trees emit CO2 when harvested they do so as much in Finland as in PNG.

Tim Scanlon as usual has nothing but abuse to add to any debate.

Tim Scanlon: As you can't/won't do LSR on WA wheat yields relative to CO2, rain, temperature, whatever, I'll be glad to if you would kindly send me time series data on production and yields since 1960 until 2011 if possible for the main centres, e.g. those listed in Garnaut or Crimp & Howden, to tcurtin at bigblue.net.au.

Many thanks in advance.

Tim