Patio chairs fuel illegal trade in rainforest timber

Huge growth in illegal logging is driven by Western demand for cheap garden furniture, according to a new report

Vietnam has become a clearing house for illegal timber plundered from forests across south-east Asia and some of it ends up in garden furniture sold in the UK and other EU countries, says a recent report.

The Vietnam government has increased the protection of its own forests in the last few years, but its timber producers have become brokers for illegal logging operations, sourcing hardwoods mainly from the rainforests of Laos, according to the report from campaigning organisation the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).

The EIA report draws on evidence gained by undercover investigators, working for Indonesian lobby group Telapak, who posed as retail furniture buyers.

"Field investigations in Vietnam and neighbouring Laos, including secret filming and undercover visits to furniture factories, have demonstrated that ... criminal networks have now shifted their attention to looting the vanishing forests of Laos," says the report.

The EIA estimates that at least 500,000 cubic metres of logs are moved across the border from Laos into Vietnam every year. In the 1990s, Vietnamese timber companies were caught laundering illegal logs from Cambodia and Indonesia.

The trade is in direct contravention of Laos law. The EIA and Telapak are calling for immediate international action and urging retail procurement staff to check carefully the source of the timber used to make any products they buy from Vietnamese manufacturers.

Vietnam’s wooden furniture producers clocked up $2.4bn of business last year - a 10-fold increase since 2000. The EIA report concludes that this dynamic growth of Vietnam’s furniture industry is driven by the demand of end markets including Europe and the US.

"The ultimate responsibility for this dire state of affairs rests with the consumer markets that import wood products made from stolen timber," said Julian Newman, head of the EIA’s forests campaign. "Until these states clean up their act and shut their markets to illegal wood products, the loss of precious tropical forests will continue unabated."