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Apart from
its direct impact, logging plays a major role in deforestation
through the building of roads which are subsequently used by landless
farmers to gain access to rainforest areas. These displaced people
then clear the forest by slashing and burning to grow enough food
to keep them and their families alive, a practice which is called
subsistence farming. This problem is so widespread that Robert
Repetto of the World Resources Institute ranks commercial logging
as the biggest agent of tropical deforestation. This view was
supported by the World Wide Fund for Nature's 1996 study, Bad
Harvest?, which surveyed logging in the world's tropical forests.
Most of the
rainforest timber on the international market is exported to rich
countries. There, it is sold for hundreds of times the price that
is paid to the indigenous people whose forests have been plundered.
The timber is used in the construction of doors, window frames,
crates, coffins, furniture, plywood sheets, chopsticks, household
utensils and other items.
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