Russian and Chinese Forests, Societies and Environments in Transition

Conservation implications of exporting domestic wood harvest to neighboring countries

“…The practice of protecting forests at home and harvesting forests abroad is not restricted to Europe (Sedjo, 1995;Dekker-Robertson and Libby, 1998;Berlik et al, 2002). The global trade of both timber and wood products has grown increasingly complex, with some countries importing wood at the same or higher rate as that it exports, and in general richer countries are net importers (Kopylova et al, 1999). Poorer countries tend to devalue their forest resources, producing trade differentials that encourage further harvest and fail to account for increasing scarcity of over-harvested forests (Barbier, 1999).…”