“The forest in Laos will be gone in the near future, and it will be impossible for the Lao government to increase forest coverage to 70 percent by 2020, according to the national forest strategy,” the civil society official said. Laos’ forest sector has shifted away from the export of mainly unfinished wood products to managed plantations and export-based forest production, according to a report issued last October by the London-based NGO Chatham House, with logs shipped primarily to Vietnam, Thailand and China, often through illegal sales. Officials are now implementing the ban to control and manage log exports and have suspended the felling of trees in forest areas, he said.ĭeforestation has been a major problem in the last two decades for Laos, whose forests cover less than 40 percent of the country's land, according to the Lao Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment. “The officials just implement the law against villagers who have cut the logs to build their houses, but they do not do anything to the big log smugglers who are destroying Laos’ forest,” the civil society official said. Officials seized and destroyed hundreds of electric saws last week in Vientiane province in central Laos, because they said they were used to illegally cut timber. “The logs which we have are left from last season, and now we are promoting wood processing in order to add more value to wood products before exporting them.” “In the province, we have suspended cutting logs since May,” he said.
“This is a part of what I see, but it does not include the number of trucks that I do not see.”īut Khaenthong Sisouvong, deputy governor of Attapue province, who is in charge of forest management, told RFA that his province has implemented the ban to control timber exports and manage forest resources according to the rule of law and through cooperation with districts and villages. “Since May, I have seen many hundreds of trucks transporting logs to Vietnam,” he said.
“This means the announcement cannot be implemented for enforcement because people and relevant officials know well that those who are behind the log smuggling are some national leaders,” said the civil society leader who requested anonymity. 18, hundreds of trucks in Champasak, Salavan, Sekong and Attapue provinces, which have more timber than do the northern provinces, are continuing to transport wood to neighboring Vietnam around the clock, the official, who requested anonymity, and locals told RFA’s Lao Service. A recent ban on the export of raw logs imposed by the Lao government to increase the value of processed wood products is not being enforced in the country’s southern provinces because some national leaders are involved in timber smuggling, a civil society official with knowledge of the situation said.Īlthough Vientiane imposed the export ban on Aug.