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from the physical and economic shocks of its defeat, the manufacturing sector really began to take off, and with it, the demand for wood. In 1955, 95.1% of that lumber came from the island nation itself. As the yen strengthened, though, more and more of the timber came from abroad. By 1970, Japan's own wood production supplied 63.2% of its needs. In 1980, domestic wood accounted for 32.9%, and in 1995, the figure was only 13.3%. Was the country running out of forest to cut? On the contrary, the percentage of Japan cloaked in forest has been increasing steadily throughout the period since 1960.

Indonesia, in contrast, was 75% forested in 1966, when the new President Suharto took power. Suharto made a deal to sell off the tropical forest woods, primarily to Japan and South Korea. As of 1995, forest cover was down to 37% of the archipelago's area. In 2007, it was 26.9%.

The story is the same wherever governments are willing to sell off their nations' natural treasures to make a quick yen. The Pacific Northwest of the U.S. has lost 95% of its original forest. The Tongass National Forest is 70% logged. (Can we still call it a "forest," I wonder?) Ghana has lost, or rather sold, 90% of its tropical forest. Papua New Guinea entered the market in 1998, and 20% of its forests are already gone.

China's rapid industrialization and related import of massive amounts of timber, joining neighboring Japan and South Korea in the market, seems to sound the death-knell for remaining tropical and temperate forests around the world.

Should this process be allowed to continue, until all of the forests in the developing world have been fed into the economies of East Asia? Is it fair that Japan and its neighbors export deforestation around the world? Can the rest of the world afford to make a counter-offer, paying developing countries to leave those trees standing? Then again, can the rest of the world afford not to? We need to answer these questions now, while there are still some living forests.

Sources:

"Underlying Causes of Deforestation and Forest Degradation: Japan's Overseas Forests," World Rainforest Movement. http://www.wrm.org.uy/deforest ation/Asia/summary.html

"Trade Policy in Indonesia: Implications for Deforestation," Joshua Brann, Bologna Center Journal of International Affairs (Spring, 2002).
http://www.jhubc.it/bcjournal/ archive/print/2002/indonesia.p df

"Deforestation," Wikipedia (accessed on Feb. 8, 2008). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D eforestation

Learn more about this author, Kallie Szczepanski.
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