- The booming Chinese demand for hongmu furniture — luxury items particularly prized by China’s growing middle class — has pushed several rosewood species to the brink.
- In response to the crisis provoked by the hongmu trade, Siamese rosewood (Dalbergia cochinchinensisspp) was listed on Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in 2013.
- But that listing “has largely failed” to protect the species from levels of trade that threaten its survival in the wild because of the actions of Laos and Cambodia — both parties to CITES and key range states for Siamese rosewood — which have “fundamentally undermined efforts to curb trade,” according to the EIA report.
Corruption in Cambodia and Laos is driving the illegal exports of endangered rosewood species in violation of UN protections, according to a new report by the Environmental Investigation Agency.
The booming Chinese demand for hongmu furniture — luxury items particularly prized by China’s growing middle class — has pushed several rosewood species to the brink. Chinese rosewood imports were at an all-time high in 2014, and nearly half came from African countries like Nigeria and Ghana. But the majority of rosewood imports into China have traditionally come from Southeast Asia, particularly Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam.
In response to the crisis provoked by the hongmu trade, Siamese rosewood (Dalbergia cochinchinensis) was listed on Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in 2013. But that listing “has largely failed” to protect the species from levels of trade that threaten its survival in the wild because of the actions of Laos and Cambodia — both parties to CITES and key range states for Siamese rosewood — which have “fundamentally undermined efforts to curb trade,” according to the EIA report.
In the initial 18 months after the CITES listing of the species, Laos and Cambodia together exported a volume of Siamese rosewood equivalent to 120 percent of the largest known remaining wild population, the 80,000 to 100,000 trees that were estimated to exist in Thailand in 2011 — all of which are in protected areas and banned from harvest or trade.
International trade in Appendix II species is not strictly forbidden, but may be authorized by relevant authorities if and when they are satisfied that the timber is legal and that trade will not negatively affect the species’ chances of survival in the wild.
Cambodia and Laos have both failed to conduct inventories of remaining populations, however, meaning that permits for exports could not have been based on any credible data and were therefore most likely harvested illegally, which the report says “is undoubtedly severely detrimental to the survival of the species in the wild.”
Cambodia has “either incorrectly or illegitimately” issued CITES export permits for the majority of the 12,202 cubic meters of Siamese rosewood it exported between June 2013 and December 2014, per the report. Meanwhile, the situation in Laos is even more dire, with the country having exported 63,530 cubic meters of Siamese rosewood in the same time period – which is slightly more than Thailand’s entire estimated stocks of 63,500 cubic meters.
“Laos and Cambodia have systematically disregarded the most basic legal safeguards of UN trade rules for endangered species in ways that seriously undermine the credibility of CITES, while edging Siamese rosewood ever-closer to extinction,” EIA Senior Forest Campaigner Jago Wadley said in a statement. “CITES intervention is urgently required.”
The EIA is calling for an immediate suspension of trade in Siamese rosewood from Cambodia and Laos until both countries are capable of demonstrating credible proof that the level of trade is not detrimental to the survival of the species.
The group has also previously advocated for certain measures to strengthen the Appendix II listing of the species, an approach adopted in a proposal submitted by Thailand to be considered at the CITES Conference of the Parties in September 2016. But in light of this new information revealing the large volumes of illegitimate CITES permits being issued by Cambodia and Laos, EIA says it is now concerned those measures may not go far enough.
“Siamese rosewood now presents an important test case of CITES’s ability to function as a credible international instrument to regulate trade in threatened timber species when some Parties wilfully flout their obligations,” the EIA report states.