One study, from the Environmental Investigation Agency in 2018, found that only one-third of tropical timber shipments from Peru to China were properly inspected, and of those that were inspected, 70 percent were found to be from illegally deforested land.
Another study published in May found that Chinese imports of products known to cause deforestation between 2013 and 2022 were linked to the loss of roughly 4 million hectares of tropical forest, nearly 70 percent of which was illegally deforested. The greenhouse gas emissions from these imports were roughly on par with the annual fossil fuel emissions of Spain.
“While China is a global leader in domestic reforestation and renewable energy, this report highlights a critical blind spot of the environmental cost of its imported agricultural and timber commodities,” said Kerstin Canby, a senior director with Forest Trends, in a press statement published along with the report.
In an interview, Canby noted that China has implemented robust reforestation programs within its borders, but that has had a direct impact on vulnerable forests elsewhere, including the Amazon.
“China has been a star, but that has ripple effects,” Canby said. “Everyone’s trying to protect their own forest, but all that does is push demand to those countries that have the least amount of governance, the ones that are not putting in place protections for their own forest.”
Coda
From the rooftop studio where Arce paints landscapes of her coastline view, she can almost touch the netted scaffolding erected outside the walls of her house to keep construction dust and debris from flying into the windows. (It did anyway.)
Every day now, trucks come rumbling, idling at the entrance to the port, which is about 100 feet from her back door. She doesn’t know exactly what’s in them, nor has she or anyone else calculated the damage caused by their payloads. She just knows that soon there will be more of them.
Arce, and many of her neighbors, worry the city’s troubles may get worse as the port expands into its second and third phases of construction over the next several years, and as more roads and railways are built to serve it.
“There is no space for the people who live here. We would have to leave. Who are they going to take out of their houses?” she said. “That’s the next fight.”
She worries that cracks will continue to creep across the walls in the house she’s lived in since she was a baby or that the foundation could crumble one day. Then someone joked that she should ask the Chinese for compensation. Maybe one of the newly delivered electric cars.
Arce cracked a wry smile and looked out at the ocean, which that night was flat and still. “Or a new house,” she said.
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.