Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

hatrack

(59,436 posts)
Sat Nov 7, 2020, 10:34 AM Nov 2020

China's Demand, Economic Chaos Driving Destruction Of Remaining Hardwood Forests In Gambia, Senegal

EDIT

The scale of the illegal harvesting and smuggling was recently revealed in a report by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), which found that approximately 1.6 million rosewood trees were illegally logged in the Casamance and exported from the Gambia to China between June 2012 and April 2020. Previous EIA investigations revealed how trafficking of protected rosewood in West Africa’s dry forests has become the largest in the world, supplying China’s rapacious billion-dollar market for hongmu, a type of rosewood used for traditional-style furniture.

EDIT

Since the end of the two-decade rule of strongman Yahya Jammeh in the Gambia in 2017, there has been much tough talk on ending the “Senegambia” rosewood crisis between his democratically elected successor, Adama Barrow, and President Macky Sall of Senegal. In 2018, they made a declaration on joint enforcement, with the Gambia joining Senegal in banning rosewood exports and implementing army patrols along the border to crack down on the smuggling.

Observers say the trafficking abated for a while, but EIA’s data show the rate of trafficking has in fact worsened over the past two years: between February 2017, when the Gambia suspended rosewood exports, and April 2020, China imported 329,351 tons of rosewood from the Gambia. This is more than China imported in 2015 and 2016 (241,254 tons), when the Gambia was still ruled by Jammeh. The former dictator, who has tribal connections with the Casamance, established rosewood trafficking as his fiefdom, reportedly making millions of dollars in exports through a parastatal company in Banjul, the capital. “There is not much change in the scale of the trafficking, despite the measures. Sometimes the authorities arrest traffickers in the border area, but the trafficking is continuing,” said Paulin Maurice Toupane, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, a think tank based in Dakar, the Senegal capital.

EDIT

“The deteriorating economic situation in the region caused by the conflict is one of the main factors in the trafficking continuing, the areas where trafficking is developing are the border areas where there is not so much socioeconomic investment,” Toupane said. “In fact, Ziguinchor and Kolda are among the poorest regions, so for a large part of the population illegal logging is a main source of revenue.” With high levels of unemployment, especially among youths, Mballo said it is hard for people who eke out livelihoods from the forest to resist becoming involved in the extensive rosewood trafficking network. The traffickers are mostly Gambians and Senegalese who act as agents or middlemen on behalf of Chinese timber traders based primarily in the Gambia; locals in the Casamance are recruited to handle the logging and transportation of timber by donkey cart to the Gambian border. Once on the other side, the timber is stored in hidden depots and shipped from the port of Banjul to China.

EDIT

https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/chinese-demand-and-domestic-instability-are-wiping-out-senegals-last-forests/

Latest Discussions»Issue Forums»Environment & Energy»China's Demand, Economic ...