O Centro para Pesquisa Florestal Internacional (Cifor), com sede na Indonésia, alertou nesta quinta-feira sobre o alto risco financeiro e ambiental que representa o investimento em novas fábricas de celulose em países em desenvolvimento. Em um estudo financiado pela União Européia, o Cifor comenta a recente "guerra do papel" entre Uruguai e Argentina, pela construção de duas grandes fábricas de celulose, para assinalar a ausência generalizada de informação sobre o assunto.

China’s huge appetite for paper is fueling pulp mill expansions and accelerating the loss of forests in countries such as Indonesia, a global research institute said on Thursday. David Kaimowitz, director general for the Center for International Forestry Research, told Reuters large pulp mills were being built without lenders such as the World Bank checking that the proposed mills had enough raw material.

The story also appeared in Reuters India and The Epoch Times, Yahoo! Asia News, Independent Online, The New Zealand Herald, The Malaysia Star

Investors and lenders are failing to properly assess the financial risks behind pulp mill projects around the globe, setting the stage for a possible repeat of the $14bn Asia Pulp & Paper debacle that affected financial institutions worldwide, according to a new study. The results of the study released today by researchers at the Indonesia-based Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), one of the world’s leading forestry research centres, come amid a major expansion in capacity in the pulp and paper industry.

The story also appeared in The Australian

The rapidly expanding world pulp mill industry could be poised for collapse due to a failure by financial institutions to research how wood is going to be found to feed new mills, a report said. The report by the Indonesian-based Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) said that false assumptions about the origins and cost of wood used in emerging market mills has led investors to channel billions of dollars into financially risky and environmentally destructive ventures.

      The story also appeared in Yahoo! News, Yahoo! News UK & Ireland, Republikein Namibia, Yahoo! Australia & NZ Finance.

A shortage of wood to fuel growing demand from pulp and paper mills worldwide is forcing some companies to tap illegal sources while others are clear-cutting tropical forests, a leading conservation group charged Thursday. In an eight-year study, the Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research, or CIFOR, also found that international investors have sunk US$40 billion (euro31.3 billion) worldwide into "financially risky and environmentally destructive" projects with little concern for their sustainability.

The story also appeared in The Jakarta Post, The Manila Times and ABS-CBNNEWS, The Standard

Some officials were quick to blame the disaster on illegal logging, although a report last year by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the Center for International Forestry Research found little connection between deforestation and major floods.

Notes: More news of the landslide in Philippine available at The Australian, 21 February 2006, title Mudslide blame shifts to sodden soil.

Local knowledge should be the basis for scientific research, according to ecologist Douglas Sheil. “In ecological and scientific studies on nature conservation, the real problems are often not addressed”, says Irishman Douglas Sheil, a tropical ecologist from the Center of International Forestry Research in Bogor (Java). Sheil believes in a different approach which he has been putting into practice since 1995 in Malinau, a rugged and still largely forested sub-province of Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo.

Illegal logging crimes are structural and involve various people in a range of different positions. This is also true when illegal timber is auctioned.

Notes: Same story appeared in ANTARA News Wire, 19 February 2006