China’s rosewood craving cuts deep into Madagascar rainforests | Environment | The Guardian

China’s rosewood craving cuts deep into Madagascar rainforests | Environment | The Guardian: "Another day draws to its end in Antanandavehely, a peaceful village on the eastern slopes of the Masoala peninsula, the largest nature conservation area in Madagascar. The last rafts, loaded with rosewood, pull into the river bank. As the loggers return, the atmosphere grows festive, infused with the smell of beer and the sound of dice clicking.

Among the russet logs, exhausted by a hard day’s labour, Blandine checks the weight of the incoming cargo. Wearing a little black dress and sparkling jewels, she is a go-between for the big businessmen on the coast. Dipping into a bag full of banknotes she pays $135 for a two-metre-long log, generally weighing about 120kg, a fortune in this poverty-stricken country. In addition to its rich colour and fragrance, rosewood is prized for its even texture and high density. It finds a ready market in China, where reproduction furniture is highly sought after.


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At this price there is no shortage of willing hands, in Madagascar and China, to plunder forests on the Unesco World Heritage list and pack containers full of rosewood logs, to be carried along routes well oiled by corruption. One of the main routes takes the wood from the streets of Antanandavehely to prosperous Xianyou, a new town of 1 million people in Fujian province. Its journey passes through Zanzibar in Tanzania, Mombasa in Kenya and Hong Kong. There are certainly others but this is probably the largest, its ramifications reaching up into the higher echelons of Madagascar’s government. Everyone here knows about the racket in bola bola, as the wood is known locally. Many of those involved belong to old Chinese families, who arrived in the early 20th century to build the railway."



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