African Media: African Woods Was Destructed Because the Popularity of Mahogany Furniture in China – MIGE office furniture

Before the Chinese support for buyers to pay for mahogany, no one noticed this multi-branches trees with yellow flowers in the northern Côte d’Ivoire. Five years ago, Côte d’Ivoire was in a time of turmoil in migeof furniture the logging industry, when permit was confusion with illegal logging, and ultimately government forbad the mahogany cutting in 2014. “Those trees were there for decades,” says Jean Garno, a Rosewood consultant to the government. “We didn’t realize its value until we found the wood is popular in China.”

The surge in Chinese demand for mahogany has stimulated at least $ 1.3 billion of mahogany trade in West Africa, most of which is illegal. This has caused large tracts of forest to be cut down.

China is the world’s largest timber consumer, the reason why Modern panel conference desk mahogany is so popular in the country, is because the middle class likes to use mahogany to counterfeit antique furniture. Importers initially fancy the neighboring Southeast Asia, where the mahogany almost been cut down, the traders began targeting West Africa.

Quantitatively, the first seven countries supplying mahogany to China are all in Africa. Most West African countries ban mahogany exports. But regulation does not prevent illegal logging and export. According to the data Negotiation Desk collected, from January to May, China’s imports of West African mahogany wood increased by 30%, the amount of money increased by 19%.

Because local rule and law is weak, speculators in order to bypass the ban, they often take risk smuggling timber into transit or cutting into pieces and then labeled with ordinary wood.