Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

Growth of Asia’s factories are turning forests into grasslands and both booming China and India are to blame for this mass erosion of green cover. Forest experts have warned the soaring demand for timber, food, energy and commodities are all great contributors to the depletion of rainforests in Asia.

More recent reports show that the loss of forest continues to grow in Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Australia and Papua New Guinea amongst others. Although new forests in China, India and Vietnam have been planted to reduce the loss of forest, ecologists say this will not aid the problem.

New forests are being noted as man-made and therefore are said to lack the natural varieties of plants found in forests as well as species which are extremely endangered due to the heightened demand for logging. “Many plantations, in terms of biodiversity, are green concrete,” said Peter Walpole, head of the non-profit Asia Forest Network.

There is a fear that the solution to the problem of rainforests being lost throughout Asia will not easily be found as both China and India imports of wood form furniture to paper have grown in the past 10 years.

Asia’s boom economies have seen billions of dollars enter their economies through imports. Imports to China increased from 53 billion dollars in 1990 to 561 billion dollars in 2004. China is now recognized as the worlds leading furniture exporter.

On the other hand India too follows in China’s footsteps whereby imports of wood products which include paper rose from 750 million dollars in 1990 to US$3.1 billion in 2005, said the FAO.

In order to preserve rainforests and decrease the illegal logging and timber trade, solutions to the ongoing problem are being looked into at present. One suggestion to monitor the timber trade has been a universal timber certification system as well as rewarding countries for offsetting pollution through a carbon credit rewards scheme, the FAO continue to wait for some action to be taken before all of forests in Asia are lost to the demands of manufacturers.