Deforestation: How illegal logging in Ghana is fueled by China’s love for Rosewood

By Yemi Olakitan

According to Interpol, rosewood is the most trafficked illegal natural product in the world, being sold for up to $50,000 per cubic metre and increasing in value 700 times from the logger to the final consumer.

It is traded much more than elephant ivory, rhino horns, or pangolin scales. Almost majority of the African rosewood trafficking across West Africa is imported into China.

The endangered African rosewood tree attracted little interest in Ghana, but it is highly prized in China, where the interior red of the wood is used to create classically-style luxury hongmu furniture.

However, during the Cultural Revolution, when the Chinese Communist Party was railing against “bourgeois” wealth, the interior red of the wood was violently taken from its owners.

As a prestige symbol and long-term investment, the fashion has regained favour among China’s middle class, generating an over $26 billion market, primarily in China and Vietnam. Africa is being pillaged by loggers as a lot of Southeast Asia’s rosewood species have already been exhausted. China has expanded its imports of rosewood from East, West, and Central Africa by 700% since 2010.

According to the charity Environmental Investigation Agency, rosewood worth more than $2 million was smuggled from Ghana into China in November 2021, even though imports were supposed to be at a minimum because it is prohibited (EIA). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species was updated with the addition of African rosewood (Pterocarpus erinaceus) in 2018.

A Chinese national called Helena Huang, also referred to as the “Rosewood Queen” by Ghanaians, was detained in 2019 for bringing numerous containers of rosewood to Tema, Ghana’s major port, while operating out of Yipala and doing business as BrivyWelss. Huang skipped bail, was taken into custody again, and instead of facing charges, was deported.

Although the Yipala project was shut down in May 2019, illegal logging operations have continued and forced additional closures. Many environmental activists lament the fact that offenders avoid justice far too frequently. Even the rosewood that was discovered is unknown to us. We must be honest with ourselves. Suweidu Abdulai, a monitoring and research officer for the Ghana Developing Communities Association, which works to improve the abilities of communities in the north, called it corruption. The rosewood problem has turned into a demon for us, he declared.

Northern Ghana is arid and in risk of becoming a desert. Although there aren’t many trees in this region of the country, rosewood is mostly found here, he continued. “We won’t have rosewood any more in the next several years,” according to logging. 2010 saw the start of China’s involvement in the Ghanaian rosewood trade. The development of a roughly 100-mile road connecting Fufulso and Sawla with Mole National Park in Ghana’s Northern region was partially funded by the African Development Bank. The $166 million project was given to China International Water & Electric Corp. and China Harbour Engineering Co., two state-owned Chinese contractors.

During the building of the road, which passed through woods that were protected, salvage permits were given so that timber could be lawfully exported and harvested. According to Faisal Elias, a policy and advocacy officer of the Ghana Wildlife Society, “some people took advantage of that to go beyond the area they were allocated to chop.”

Prior to the boom brought on by Chinese infrastructure projects, the rosewood trade was virtually dormant. “They became aware of how economically viable it was. Then the looting started, according to Clement Aapengnuo, head of the Damongo, northern Ghanaian centre for conflict transformation and peace studies. Chinese businessmen came through Ghana’s rural north offering what appeared to be enormous sums of money for rosewood that had been illegally harvested. “You won’t find a tree that is 25 cm [in girth] in size nowadays. All have been removed. It became exceedingly difficult for even the chiefs and environmentalists to stop because “people started buying houses that they never would have dreamed of building” with the money from laundered rosewood sales, according to Aapengnuo.