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Regional overview: Asia

Asia has lost almost 95 percent of its frontier forests. Apart from the Mediterranean and Middle East – where all such forests have disappeared – this represents the world’s greatest loss of frontier forest outside of Europe. China and India today have just 20 percent of their original forest cover. Of these remaining forests, less than 10 percent can be classified as frontier. In the 20 years between 1960 and 1980 alone, Asia lost almost a third of its tropical forest cover, the highest rate of forest conversion in the world. [62]

On mainland Southeast Asia, most frontiers are gone. The isolated pockets left are confined primarily to Burma, Laos, and Cambodia, where war and civil unrest until recently inhibited development. With peace have come new threats from commercial loggers who have already exhausted forests in Thailand and peninsular Malaysia – where harvest and import restrictions now encourage logging companies to move on to neighboring nations.

Most of Asia’s remaining frontier forest is confined to the islands of Borneo, Sumatra, Sulawesi, and Irian Jaya. Even here, however, loggers have exploited most accessible forests along coasts and major rivers. Agriculture and poorly planned resettlement programs also take a toll. Between 1969 and 1994, Indonesia’s transmigration program moved 8 million people to the nation’s forested islands where 1.7 million hectares of tropical forest were soon stripped. [63]

More than half of Asia’s last frontiers are under moderate to high threat, particularly from logging. An even greater long-term worry is Asia’s burgeoning population and its ever increasing demand for food and agricultural land. Between 1990 and 1995 alone, the region’s largely rural population grew by more than 270 million people. The world’s most densely populated region, Asia had more than 1 person for every hectare of land in 1995. [64]

Threatened frontiers include:

Frontier:
1. Ratanakiri province
Forest type: Tropical
Geographic location: Cambodia
Threat: Illegal logging for export to Vietnam. Outside protected areas, most of the province is already under concession to foreign logging companies.
At risk: Resident minority groups, already evicted from other areas by logging companies. Rice farming and local fishing here and elsewhere in the Mekong River watershed. Kouprey and other highly endangered species.

Frontier:
2. Sundarbans
Forest type: Tropical
Geographic location: Bangladesh and India
Threat: Logging, fuelwood collection
At risk: The world’s largest mangrove forest. Habitat for the world’s largest and possibly only viable population of the Bengal tiger. Fish and forest products provide a living for up to 300,000 local families. [65]

Frontier:
3. North Heilongjiang Province
Forest type: Boreal
Geographic location: China
Threat: Logging: 80 percent of this frontier is slated to be cut.
At risk: One of China’s few remaining large intact tracts of primary forest. Habitat for several important wildlife species. Protection for the headwaters of the Amur River.

References and notes

62. K.D. Singh and Antonio Marzoli, “Deforestation Trends in the Tropics: A Time Series Analysis,” paper presented at the World Wildlife Fund Conference on Potential Impact of Climate Change on Tropical Forests, San Juan, Puerto Rico, April 1995, pp. 8-9.

63. National Development Planning Agency, Government of Indonesia, Sixth Five-Year Development Plan 1994/5-1998/9, Vol. III, (Jakarta: National Planning Agency, 1994), pp. 421-22.

64. World Resources Institute, World Resources 1996-97, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 191, 217.

65. World Resources Institute, Bangladesh: Environment and Natural Resource Assessment, (Washington, D.C.: World Resources Institute, 1990), p. 27.