Forest trade and finance

Watchara Kumpai, 68, spends most of his time in boots, stomping through coastal mangrove forests in southern Thailand. He used to work in the tin mining and logging industries that contributed to mangrove loss, until all concessions in mangrove areas were cancelled in 1991. Today, Watchara is dedicated ...

The confusion over Myanmar timber exports to India was laid to rest last month when the central government in New Delhi informed the Indian border state of Mizoram that timber was not on the restricted list of commodities from Myanmar. New Delhi’s directive was in response to a ...

Myanmar’s military junta exported more than $37 million worth of timber to nations with active sanctions on the country’s state-run timber monopoly, according to the environmental advocacy group Forest Trends. In a report released yesterday, the U.S.-based organization examined the impact of sanctions imposed since the ...

WOB Timber, a logging company based in Hamburg, Germany, has been ordered by a court to pay a $4 million fine for illegally trading Myanmar timber. The April 27 decision was one of the highest financial penalties for this type of crime in the European ...

A new Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC)-For-Trade project, in collaboration with the United Nations (UN) Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) Programme’s initiative for the Lower Mekong, will promote trade and sustainable forest management (SFM) and at ...

Businessmen in Laos’s Attapeu province are selling timber hidden for years in the forest after being harvested illegally, mixing it with other timber allowed by provincial authorities to be sold by local villagers, Lao sources say. Now being sold to private businessmen, the contraband timber was ...

The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development is providing about EUR 20 million and the Lao government is contributing the equivalent of EUR 4 million as non-cash benefits for the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) project from 2021 to 2026. An agreement ...

New research shows that the fast warming of the planet could cause trees and plants to release more carbon than they absorb, a critical function reversal that would further accelerate climate change. By as early as 2040, given the current projections of global temperature rise, land ...

Vietnam has entered the world’s carbon credit trading market after a long period striving for sustainable forest management. This is a major event, marking a positive start in mobilising new resources for forest protection and improving forest quality and sustainable forest management, thereby helping Vietnam ...

Myanmar’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation has disputed the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA)’s latest report which claims illegal teak from Myanmar is being shipped to Europe through the black market. “All the teak we export is legal,” U Kyaw Zaw Oo, the deputy ...