Suchergebnisse

Over the past decade China has quietly emerged as the world's third largest biofuel producer. Concerned over rising food prices, in June 2007 China's central government banned the use of grain-based feedstocks for biofuel production and reoriented the country's bioenergy plans toward perennial crops grown on marginal land. One such crop, Jatropha curcas, has emerged as a high potential biodiesel feedstock because of its adaptability to the diverse growing conditions where China's marginal land is abundant. Provincial governments in Southwest China, for instance, have drafted ambitious plans to increase Jatropha by over one million hectares in the next decade. This paper analyzes the opportunities and challenges for the development of a Jatropha industry in Southwest China. Given the scarcity of data on Jatropha productivity and economics, we argue that plans to rapidly expand Jatropha acreage and refining capacity could jeopardize the industry's longer-term viability. Alternatively, a commitment to silvicultural, engineering, and economic research could set the industry on a more sustainable path.

Over 70 % of China's timber product imports are supplied by countries in the Asia Pacific region, and China is the dominant forest product market for many of these countries. Unsustainable harvesting practices, illegal logging, and negative impacts on community livelihoods plague many of these supplying countries. The countries may be divided into those still harvesting and exporting timber from natural forests on a large scale and those which have gone past their highest levels of natural forest timber harvesting and are now more aggressively pursuing plantation development and processing. Apart from Russia, China's top Asia Pacific timber suppliers could at best maintain current supply, with natural forest resources being depleted in less than 20 years. Resource limits also constrain expansion and/or long-term continuation of processed product export to China. Greater attention and action on the part of governments, market leaders, and international organizations is needed to address negative impacts, shifting supply to a sustainable, legal, and equitable basis and to determine from where China's long-term supply will come.