Chinese Loggers Exploit Miombo Woodlands at ‘Unsustainable’ Rate

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The Miombo Woodlands covers parts of eight African countries, stretching from Burundi to Angola to southern Mozambique. Yet most of the logging that goes on in the woodlands benefits a single country: China.

Unlike the rainforest to the north, the Miombo is described as a dry tropical woodland. Miombo covers 10% of Africa’s landmass and supports the lives of more than 150 million people. It is home to a variety of tree species, many of which carry red-hued wood that is popular among Chinese furniture makers and high-end shoppers. While some of the trees are species known as rosewood, others, such as tigerwood, are also popular with Chinese loggers.

The desire for Miombo forest products drives a network of illegal logging and corruption that ultimately ends with millions of dollars’ worth of logs arriving on Chinese shores each year. According to a BBC report, more than $18 million in Miombo logs found their way to China from Mozambique between October 2023 and March 2024. The logs traveled in more than 300 shipping containers from the port at Beira.

Shipments of illegally harvested trees from African countries continue despite China’s ban on importing logs from endangered species such as rosewood. Bribes smooth the way for such shipments. The money that illegal logging generates can fund terrorist activities, according to the BBC.

Logging and shipments also continue in violation of the Maputo Declaration, also known as the Miombo Initiative, which aims to halt illegal logging and address the threats to the ecosystem.

Nine countries signed the agreement: Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo,  Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. South Africa is outside the bounds of the Miombo but was included because of its experience in managing forests.

The Chinese logging companies operating in the Miombo Woodlands are private companies rather than state-owned enterprises, according to observers. One of the biggest among them is Fodeco, a company without industrial logging experience that received a massive logging concession in the DRC in 2015. At the time, Fodeco held one of 18 such permits granted in violation of the DRC’s 22-year-old ban on new logging permits.

The Miombo Initiative was signed in the capital of Mozambique, which has become an example of how Chinese companies exploit the Miombo Woodlands.

Mozambique loses an amount of Miombo forest equal to 1,000 football fields each year. According to the Environmental Investigation Agency, more than 89% of timber exports are illegal. Much of that is rare, endangered rosewood trees.

Between 2017 and 2023, Mozambique exported about 3.7 million metric tons of timber to China. Much of it was rosewood and some of it came from areas of the country controlled by terrorists, funding their operations.

The nations that share the Miombo Woodlands generally lack the management plans and laws needed to ensure that logging remains within a range that the forest can survive, according to researchers with the Malawi-based Miombo Network.

In Mozambique, the biggest timber exporter in Southern Africa, those companies move their illegally harvested logs from the field to the furniture factory for as little as $500 in bribes paid to government officials, according to researchers with Global Voices.

“These government officials facilitate communication and secure passage at checkpoints, representing another form of collusion to violate logging bans,” the researchers wrote recently.

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi told a conference dedicated to preserving the Miombo that the nations within the woodland boundaries must cooperate to protect it.

“To go far, we must work together,” Nyusi said.

For now, China’s exploitation of the Miombo Woodlands is outpacing the forest’s ability to regenerate.

“Even though a few examples of sustainable harvesting exist, logging in the Miombo woodland is unsustainable,” Miombo Network researchers wrote in a 2018 study. “Consequently, most of the timber species are becoming extinct economically.”