This is a legal toolkit to help decision-makers use laws to reduce forest conversion and minimise the environmental and social impacts of deforestation. It offers countries a starting point to reform laws governing forest conversion.

Using legal analysis from nine tropical countries, the toolkit identifies key risks associated with unclear forest conversion laws and provides lawmakers with guidance on the questions they should ask themselves when writing or reforming forest conversion laws on five key areas:

·         Clarity around the allocation of land

The result of in-depth research and extensive on-the-ground investigations, the report exposes the scale of illegal logging and illegal timber trade in East Asia with a special focus on Indonesia. The report also highlights the role played by major tropical timber consuming nations including the US, Europe, Japan and China in driving illegal logging by providing a ready market for illegally sourced timber and timber products. In many of the countries of South-East Asia illegal logging outstrips legal logging, and large quantities of this timber finds its way

The politics of Burma and deforestation:
a. Politics of Burma;

b. Logging and civil war...

Kachin State by PKDS:
a. Logging business:

b. Who benefits from the logging...

Karen State by KESAN:
a. Doo The Htoo District;
b. Mu Traw District (Pa Pun);

c. Toungoo District...
Conclusions and recommendations by KESAN...

Maps...

This report includes a situation update submitted to KHRG in December 2012 by a community member describing events occurring in Hpa-an District, between November and December 2012. The report details the concerns of villagers in T'Nay Hsah Township, who have faced significant declines in their paddy harvest due to bug infestation. The community member also raises villagers' concerns regarding the cutting down of teak-like trees by developers, for the establishment of rubber plantations.

A Briefing Document by Global Witness. October 2003...

Table of Contents... Recommendations...
Introduction...
Summary:
Natural Resources and Conflict in Burma;
SLORC/SPDC-controlled logging;
China-Burma relations and logging in Kachin State;
Thailand-Burma relations and logging in Karen State...

International environmentalists have praised Burma for its commitment to conservation, yet in reality the greening of the Burmese dictatorship is just another tool for military coercion and advancement...

Getting to the roots of Burma’s latest timber export trade...

They had been rooted in Burma’s soil for many years, some of them for more than a century. Then the heavy excavation machinery moved in—and the trees moved out, across the border to China. Some Burmese nature lovers say the trees will be homesick, but for Burmese and Chinese entrepreneurs they just represent money. Lots of money...

(Press release): "... Ending the destruction of Burma’s northern frontier forests" , details shocking new evidence of the massive illicit plunder of Burma’s forests by Chinese logging companies. Much of the logging takes place in forests that form part of an area said to be “very possibly the most bio-diverse, rich, temperate area on earth.”

Despite the all-out efforts currently being made by the Myanmar Government to conserve and improve its forest resources, forest degradation and depletion are continuing at an alarming rate, mainly due to shifting cultivation, agricultural encroachment and illicit cutting. The heavy reliance on woodfuel has eroded its supply source in numerous areas and it is clear that unless urgent remedial measures are undertaken the more accessible forests will soon be exhausted and remote areas will have to be exploited instead, involving rising market prices.

A major resource. Several articles on Burma (use the Search and Info by country). Extremely good links page: NGOs, Intergovernmental Sites, Research Institutes; Other links. "The World Rainforest Movement is an international network of citizens' groups of North and South involved in efforts
to defend the world's rainforests. It works to secure the lands and livelihoods of forest peoples and supports their
efforts to defend the forests from commercial logging, dams, mining, plantations, shrimp farms,
colonisation and settlement and other projects that threaten them...

ABSTRACT:
Some countries have gained control of their forest-exploiting industries through
advanced regulatory regimes. But stricter regulation usually displaces forestexploitation
into countries with weaker regulatory regimes. The most important
current example is the shift of forest-exploitation for the Chinese market from
China into Southeast Asia following the logging ban in China in 1998. In this
paper we describe and document the impact of the logging ban after the 1998

The Karen State of Kawthoolei has been heavily dependent on teak extraction to fund the Karen National
Union struggle against the Burmese military junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC).
Raymond Bryant explores the social and economic structure of Kawthoolei, and the way in which resource
extraction was more than simply a source of revenue � it was also an integral part of the assertion of Karen
sovereignty...