Rainforest reporting

Today Kyodo reports, without any kind of comment, that Oji Paper Co and trading house Marubeni Corp said Monday they will plant trees in China through a company they have jointly established there in a bid to keep stable resources for paper.

The companies set up Huizhou Nanyou Forest Development Co in alliance with China's Guangdong Petro-Trade Development Corp The new company will at first plant trees on an area of 33,000 hectares in Huizhou in Guangdong Province by 2008.

Wow? This is not news, it is just regurgitating press releases from the companies. Where is the analysis that would reveal that Japan is a major destroyer of forests, all over Asia and South America, just so offices can have "whiter than white" paper by the copy machines? Activists at Rainforest Action Network has defined Japanese companies as "the worst enemies of forests in the the World". Even the government is concerned, and has pumped tax payers' money into projects to promote sustainable forest management in developing countries.

Kyodo really needs to upgrade its environmental reporting to the level of, say, Reuters.

About forest and paper previous.

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