the Selling Forests December 29, 2001 Selling the Forests rees are an important natural resource for many poor countries. A well-managed forest can provide permanent income and environmental protection. But unlike resources like oil and gas, timber is easy to steal. In too many nations, illegal loggers protected by corrupt officials are selling off forests for personal gain. Their logging has been so voracious that forests in Liberia, Cambodia, Indonesia and some other nations may be effectively bald in 10 years. In Cambodia, the international community has begun to impose controls on illegal logging. Despite mixed results, the program has shown enough promise to suggest that stronger measures might be able to preserve endangered forests. The costs of illegal logging go beyond the theft of a country's natural resources. Trees enrich soil, refresh aquifers, lessen erosion and mitigate the impact of heavy rains and drought. Floods in Cambodia in 2000 were the worst in seven decades. The United Nations blamed deforestation, and calculated the floods' cost at $156 million far more than the revenues generated by the legal forestry sector from 1994 to 2000. In Indonesia, fires set by illegal loggers have blanketed parts of the country and its neighbors in thick smog. In Liberia, President Charles Taylor is said to be using illegal timber revenue to finance paramilitary squads and a brutal guerrilla movement in neighboring Sierra Leone. A Liberian law gives Mr. Taylor personal control over natural resources, and he appointed his brother as head of the Forestry Development Authority. Liberia's agriculture minister predicts that forest eradication will lead to drought in 15 years. The U.N. has banned the sale of diamonds from Liberia, but timber seems to be filling the gap. A timber ban was considered as well, but was sidetracked China by and France, which import Liberian timber. The U.N. has now proposed another ban, to take effect in mid-2002. The ban should be imposed now. Delaying sanctions will simply encourage loggers to cut at a faster rate. Liberia would benefit from a stronger version of the sanctions that international banks and governments that give aid imposed on Cambodia. These donors began to require Cambodia to reform its forestry practices in 1995. In 1998 Cambodia began to make surprising progress. The government assembled a forest crimes monitoring unit and fought illegal logging by bandits and the military. Illegal logging again took an alarming upturn last year, mainly by companies that had exceeded their legal concessions. This month Prime Minister Hun Sen announced that all logging would be suspended as of the new year. This is welcome news, but Cambodia's benefactors must now ensure that the ban is enforced, and that Cambodia uses the pause to put in place an effective system of controls. According to the British nongovernmental organization Global Witness, the international community's o...