VIENTIANE - With Pakistan suffering from unprecedented deforestation-driven flooding, are once forested, now denuded Southeast Asian countries the next natural disasters in waiting? The collusion between government, military and illegal loggers largely responsible for Pakistan's humanitarian crisis has taken a similarly severe toll on Southeast Asia's crucial upland forests.
The widespread destruction of the forests of Malaysia and Indonesia to make way for biofuel, palm-oil, rubber and paper-pulp plantations has been well-documented, and witnessed in the smog that frequently floats over the region from slash-and-burn deforestation. Now, the impact from years of unregulated logging in Laos, often presumed to be one of the last bastions of old forest in the region, is coming into sharper view.
It's a good article in that there is so little writing coming out of Laos right now, some of it I found uninformed.
3% intact old growth forest? Too much of the north remains uncut for me to see that number. Phongsali is almost entirely uncut outside of towns and more than a kilometer off the Ou.
Good to see someone writing about deforestation. No mention of Chinese rubber farms. Better watch what he says about General Cheng he he.
