TOKYO, March 23, 2023—Approximately 80 percent of lumber imported to and logged domestically in Japan clear international and domestic regulations on illegal logging, yet the Japanese government has submitted legislation to reinforce the already stringent law, and with it, creating more work for local governments.
On Feb. 28, 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries submitted through the cabinet a bill to amend the ‘Clean Wood Law (the May 20, 2016 law on legally logged lumbers, enforced on May 20, 2017), as stipulated in the law for amendment in five years after enforcement.
The bill is expected to clear the current session of the Diet (parliament) and amendment would be enforced in 2025, an official of the MAFF Forestry Department told The Prospect March 23, 2023.
The ministry’s survey had shown that 44 percent of lumber consumed in Japan are certified by MAFF-registered sawmills and other businesses that are engaged in imports and domestic logging, and a separate survey including unregistered businesses showed 80 percent of wood in distribution clear the law’s requirements.
The official said confirming the legality of much of the remaining 20 percent will be a tall task because of difficulty to identify origins, so the ministry would urge more businesses to register as certificating entities while suspecting that most of illegally-logged lumber are believed imports and there’s ‘hardly any’ illegal logging in Japan.
Even so, MAFF would toughen certification and verification rules evenly on imports and domestic lumber based on the World Trade Organization’s most-favored nation treatment of imports from WTO member economies, he said. It’s an apparent over-regulation but the official did not respond to The Prospect’s comment.
For local Japanese municipalities, this means staffing extra manpower – jobs – to handle paperwork related to logging permits and certification of cut logs, and for loggers, cost increases and higher lumber selling prices though their take may remain little changed. It’s the reason why many local governments are expanding their forestry and environmental sections.
###
Insight Into the Future