A recent study, “Forest transition in Vietnam and displacement of deforestation abroad,” found that while Vietnam’s area of forest is increasing, it is doing so at the expense of forests in other countries, including Laos, Cambodia and Indonesia. The authors, Patrick Meyfroidt and Eric F. Lambin of the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, found that 39 per cent of the forest regrowth in Vietnam was in effect logged in other countries and about half the wood imports to Vietnam between 1987 and 2006 were illegal. The report has important implications for REDD.
