China, one of the world’s major timber trading countries, is pushing forward forest management schemes with international cooperation.

The government has worked out a national framework of criteria and indicators for forest conservation and management in line with the Montreal Process, Xiao Wenfa, an expert for the China Academy of Forestry under the State Forestry Administration (SFA), said.

The Montreal Process is a leading non-official forum with 12 member countries who are responsible for 35 percent of the world’s population, 60 percent of forest areas and about 45 percent of the world’s wood and wood product trade.

At the 12th meeting of the Montreal Process held in Beijing last week, Xiao said China will follow the guidelines.

Forests play a key role in ensuring the sustainable development of China’s national economy and ecological environment, particularly in conserving wildlife.

Serious flooding caused by excessive logging in south and northeast China two years ago prompted the government to change its strategy towards the timber trade.

The government banned all nationwide logging in natural forests, allowing only planted trees to be used for wood products.

As well as chopping the state annual timber quota by more than a third, key state-owned wood production bases are being shifted from northeastern provinces to regional forest farms in southern regions.

In northern China, about a third of a million former lumberjacks are starting to manage forests instead of cutting them down.

To meet the growing domestic timber demand in the next few years, China is increasing its replanting schemes and concentrating on fast-growing trees with a high wood yield.

Although China has forest on only 16 percent of its land, it consumes about 150 million cubic meters of wood a year.

Demand for wood in China has now exceeded the world’s entire timber trade volume of 120 million cubic meters a year, according to Wang Zhibao, a top official at the SFA.

He said China has to spend US$10 billion on importing timber, but made it clear that “China cannot expect to import enough timber from the world market to make up for a possible shortage that might be caused by its full-scale logging ban.”

Working under the Montreal Process guidelines, “China can use the world’s advanced technology to assess its own forest management abilities and reach a standard of forest products in the international market,” Chinese experts said.

(China Daily 11/13/2000)