BEIJING (AFP/ForestPress)— Global environmental group Greenpeace accused a Singapore-based multinational pulp and paper company of illegal logging and rampant forest destruction in southwestern China's Yunnan province.
Asia Pulp and Paper Co. Ltd (APP) was flouting China's forestry law and was preparing to sow destruction to Yunnan forests by replacing natural growth with eucalyptus tree plantations, Greenpeace China said in a report.
"We have distributed our report to the State Forestry Administration and the Yunnan Forest Bureau and we hope that they will take actions to stop the illegal logging and forest destruction."
The report was the first in-depth study on China's environment issued by Greenpeace since the group was allowed to open a representative office in Beijing in 2002.
APP has long been cited as a main mover behind the widescale destruction of Indonesian rain forests.
It recently agreed to a moratorium on tree cutting in some Indonesian forests until independent conservation assessments on sustainable cutting could be made.
Yunnan rain forests are some of the most diverse forests in the world with a wide variety of animal and plant life, environments say.
China implemented a stringent ban on logging in 1999 after rampant tree cutting in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River was blamed for soil erosion and severe flodding along the lower reaches.
Following the depletion of tree resources in Indonesia, the Singapore paper company entered an agreement with the Yunnan government in August 2002 to enclose three areas totalling some 2.75 million mu (183,000 hectares, 454,000 acres) and set up eucalyptus tree plantations
Greenpeace said that in order to set up the plantations, APP has begun the illegal logging of existing tropical rain forests on the land without the proper permits and in violation of the State Forestry Law.
Besides the forest destruction, the lease for the land was made without consultations with local inhabitants and none of the funds from the land concession was being used to benefit the locals, the report said.
"This is almost like an unfair treaty," Yan said, "APP has also been granted some 13.8 billion yuan (1.6 billion dollars) in loans from China's state commercial banks."