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Who is importing forest products from Africa to China? An analysis of implications for initiatives to enhance legality and sustainability

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Abstract

Global forest product value chains are increasingly subject to regulatory requirements, such as legality and sustainability certification. For African forest products, a shift in the export destinations of forest products towards China, the leading timber product manufacturer, has raised concerns that social and environmental product and process standards are declining. Aggregate drivers of this shift have been documented, yet there has been little enterprise-level analysis of Chinese actors in African timber imports based in China. This paper provides an initial analysis, highlighting implications for existing and emerging regulatory initiatives. Data show that although an increasing number of Chinese private enterprises is engaged in African timber imports, import volumes remain concentrated among a small number of geographically clustered private and state-owned firms. Government-led schemes are beginning to address timber legality concerns. But given China’s growing domestic market for finished wood products, sustainability certification requirements driven by the US and EU will not be sufficient to ensure improved sourcing by Chinese firms.

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Notes

  1. UN Comtrade data, last accessed July 2012. Total trade = sum of imports and exports of Total No 95.

  2. See UN Comtrade data.

  3. All wood product data in this and the following paragraph are based on Canby et al. (2007) updated by authors.

  4. FAO ForesSTAT, accessed July 2012.

  5. http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2010/indexeh.htm, Tables 5–19.

  6. Data from China Customs on the specific firms and their volumes of import is the most comprehensive source available. Many of the African exporting countries do not report comprehensive data, so checking data accuracy using mirror statistics is not feasible. By its nature, data on illegal imports is not available, although estimates using other sources suggest that illegal imports to China are still significant (Lawson 2010). A range of other sources of error may also exist, including differences in product classification and mis-attribution of source of original for shipments through Hong Kong (Castaño 2006). While we are aware of the potential shortcomings of this data source, it is the only available data source providing consistent data over a long period.

  7. Identification of the firms with investments was initially done using internet sources, and subsequently verified during fieldwork in Africa.

  8. Previously called the Pan European Forest Certification scheme.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of the paper. The research presented in this article was conducted as part of the project “Chinese trade and investment in Africa: Assessing and governing trade-offs to national economies, local livelihoods and forest ecosystems,” funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ-GIZ-BEAF Contract No. 81121785) and implemented by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). The authors alone bear responsibility for any opinions expressed in this paper.

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Correspondence to Wenbin Huang.

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Huang, W., Wilkes, A., Sun, X. et al. Who is importing forest products from Africa to China? An analysis of implications for initiatives to enhance legality and sustainability. Environ Dev Sustain 15, 339–354 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-012-9413-1

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