Aug 15, 2006, 11:05 GMT
Jakarta - A coalition of environmental groups on Tuesday accused leading European flooring manufacturers of using wood stolen from Indonesia's last remaining rainforests.
The London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and its Indonesian partner Telapak had previously released evidence claiming that much of the merbau timber sold as flooring by several European and North American flooring manufacturers had come from Indonesia's strife-torn Papua province, where illegal logging is rampant.
The groups said that although many British and American flooring retailers moved immediately to remove the products from sale, three European manufacturers refused to do so. The groups identified the manufacturers as Tarkett of Germany, Kahrs of Sweden, and Junkers of Denmark.
'While we applaud the swift response of the large retail chains, we are appalled by the failure of major flooring brands to take similar decisive action,' Sam Lawson, a senior investigator with EIA, said in a joint-statement with Telapak. 'These companies are clearly more concerned with supplying the demands of consumers for cheap and fashionable flooring than they are with keeping their hands free of contraband wood.'
The statement said Junkers had made 'considerable effort' to investigate the groups' findings but continues to use Indonesian merbau, while the other two manufacturers have not responded to EIA and Telapak's investigation.
Papua, one of the world's most remote areas, lies on the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago and is home to some of the last significant tracts of virgin tropical forest in Asia.
Rampant illegal logging, in many cases protected by Indonesian security forces, has enabled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of prime timber to be smuggled out of the province and shipped abroad.
Around 60 million hectares of pristine forest across Indonesia has vanished in the last 20 years because of over-cutting, illegal logging, land conversion, natural disasters and forest fires, according to The Jakarta Post newspaper. According to EIA, Indonesia was the largest source of illegal timber and wood products to the European Union in 2004.
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