Guyana and the Wider World: Poverty and the forestry sector Part 6

This column will conclude the discussion on the failure of the forestry sector to alleviate poverty, and introduce the subject of next week's column which will follow the supply chain to the principal destinations for Guyana's prime hardwood logs. In 2004, David Kaimowitz, then the Director General of CIFOR (Center for International Forestry Research) evocatively described the boom in imports of wood fibre into China, consequent on its 1998 partial ban on logging in natural forest and the rapid expansion of wood-using industries, mostly geared to export markets, as "the giant sucking sound of Chinese forestry imports."