Luke Hughes looks at what can be learnt from Chinese forestry
There was a fascinating article in the Financial Times (on 1 Feb 2011) about the Canadian timber market. In British Columbia, China has become more than just a booming market. Since 2003, exports to China have soared more than tenfold, reaching an estimated 6 million cubic metres in 2010. The target for 2011 is 9.5 million. The catalyst for this was the Sichuan earthquake.
That disaster flattened flimsy school buildings built from reinforced concrete, killing thousands and sparking a public outcry over construction standards. Meng Zhaohuai, a member of the National People’s Congress, wrote after the earthquake ‘wood structures are not only environmentally friendly, more comfortable and earthquake resilient but also better for recycling compared to concrete’. His view was doubltess influenced by the fact that the three biggest Canadian exporters supplied enough timber to rebuild 600 homes after the quake. This initiative has been followed by a demonstration of how wood could be used for bigger buildings such as schools and retirement centres. The first five-storey apartment block is now going up in Tianjin, south-east of Beijing.
The Canadians are particularly keen to find a market for the dying stands of lodgepole pines across British Columbia and Alberta that have been devastated by the a recent attacks of mountain pine beetles; 40 million acres (160,000 sq. km) are said to have been affected - reputedly the largest forest insect blight ever seen in North America - so finding a potential market for the timber before it is too diseased to have any value, is something of a relief.
So what are the implications? The sheer scale of the Chinese market (both for softwood construction timber and decorative hardwoods) will continue to push timber prices up around the world. This has to be a good thing since it will encourage land owners all over the world to go on investing in their forestry cover. Will the Chinese be encouraged to invest in their reforestation and afforestation, even if it takes 60 years to come to fruition? One hopes so.
Like India and Europe and the Middle East, China’s Loess Plateau was cleared of forests millennia ago. Since then it has been eroding steadily. The Yellow River is so named for the colour of the sediment that causes the flooding of the river in the lower reaches (hence the river’s nickname ‘China’s sorrow’). The Chinese government has, in the past, required citizens to plant three to five trees a year. It claims they have planted a billion trees every year since 1982 (although quite how many have survived is not verifiable). It also introduced the ‘Green Wall of China’ project, with the intention of slowing down the expansion of the Gobi desert. They had clearly not read of the legend of King Canute and the waves: some reports suggest up to 75% of the trees died. Nevertheless, it gives an indication of a measure of ecological awareness and political will. According to a report in National Geographic News (6 November 2006), there has been a 47-million-hectare increase in forest cover in China since the 1970s. These 35 billion new trees have increased China’s forest cover from 12% to 16.55% in two decades.
In an earlier blog, I mentioned that forest cover in the US had tripled since the American Civil War, and doubled since 1953. The implications, were the Chinese to follow suit over the next two generations, could be extremely favorable to the global eco-system. Ian Sample, writing in the Guardian, has suggested that aforestation and reforestation projects across the world could ‘reverse the global decline in woodlands within 30 years’. That would be impressive. One of the balances that must be found will be that between the mix of plantation to natural forests. It has been suggested that plantations yield up to five times the amount of harvestable timber of natural forest, and that plantations yielding 10 cubic metres per hectare annually could supply all the timber required for international trade on 5% of the world’s existing forestland. So, the way forward for the Chinese might be a mosaic of high-yield plantation forest land interspersed with conservation land.
They might learn from the bad example of the British Forestry Commission, for so long promoting forestry mono-cultures across the hillsides of Wales, Cumbria and Scotland. Sadly, I doubt the Chinese will choose to learn anything from the British, even from their mistakes.
