Garden furniture boosts deforestation, illegal logging report claims

The derivation of garden furniture imported into Britain has been brought into question again by an investigation naming Vietnam as a hub for the illegal timber trade.
Undercover investigators concluded the majority of Vietnamese furniture factories are using logs from neighbouring Laos and are driving deforestation and illegal logging.
At one point investigators spotted 45 trucks stacked with logs lined up in a column waiting to drive across the border from Laos to Vietnam.
They calculated that 500,000 cubic metres of logs are transported by this route each year.
Investigators said the “plundering of Laos’ forests involves high-level corruption and bribery” and that much of the wood “is made into furniture for export to garden centres and merchants in the UK”.
Illegal logging in Indochina threatens to destroy some of the last intact forests in the region, said the Environmental Investigation Agency  (http://www.eia-international.org/), based in London, which carried out a joint inquiry with the Indonesian NGO Telapak.
Their report, Borderlines, noted that while some countries, including Indonesia, have cracked down on illegal logging, the “criminal networks” behind it have shifted their attention to Laos.
Responsibility, the report claimed, lies in part with people in Europe and the United States who buy the furniture made from the timber and thereby encourage illegal logging.
“The ultimate responsibility for this dire state of affairs rests with the consumer markets with import wood products made from stolen timber,” said Julian Newman of EIA.