pulitzercenter.org – APRIL 4, 2023
Vietnam’s Forests Have Been Cleared To Supply the World’s Timber Industry
In Central Vietnam’s factory, wood chips are accumulated in the rear of a three-wheel vehicle used to transport acacia wood to the processing machine. Image by Thanh Nguyen.
Vietnam is ranked the fifth-largest country in the world, second in Asia, and the largest in Southeast Asia in furniture exports. Vietnamese furniture has been directly exported to 120 countries and territories.
However, behind this impressive figure is that series of natural forests that have been cut down and quickly. These forest land areas have been occupied for growing short-term timber trees.
Deforestation makes natural disasters in Vietnam more severe, local people suffer the most from the consequences.
An investigation will be published on Mekong Eye.
pulitzercenter.org – NOVEMBER 19, 2023
Part 1: Smoke, Mirrors, Wood Pellets: Vietnam Clears Native Forest To Supply ‘Clean’ Energy to Asia
Bao-Uyen Vo-Kieu
RAINFOREST INVESTIGATIONS FELLOW
Following the harvesting season in late September 2023, a field of acacia trees in Tien Cam commune of Vietnam’s central Quang Nam province was intentionally burned to ready the land for the upcoming planting season. Image by Thanh Nguyen.
Expansive deforestation in Central Vietnam is being driven by the global demand for wood pellets–a supposedly green alternative to fossil fuels.
BINH DINH, CENTRAL VIETNAM ― Vietnam has supplied wood pellets to Japan and South Korea in its quest to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through an increase in biomass energy production. However, the origins of these pellets are questionable, and some are even linked to deforestation.
When the rainy season begins in September, mountains throughout Central Vietnam are covered with an infinite expanse of green. Yet the green is not of natural forests made up of native tree species.
The forests are actually plantations of exotic acacia trees, and they are a sign of massive deforestation.
Image courtesy of Mapbox.
Hai, a 40-year-old farmer in the country’s central Binh Dinh province, cleared the natural forests a decade ago amid the villagers’ rush to plant acacia ― the raw material used for producing wood pellets currently being marketed as an environmentally friendly and low-cost energy source.
Part of his two-hectare hilly plantation is located in the ‘production forest area,’ the state land distributed to villagers for growing commercial timber trees nearly 20 years ago. He obtained another “very small” part of the plantation through forest clearance.
“Back then, many people here did the same [by clearing natural forest for acacia plantations],” said Hai.
It took five years for his farm to yield fruit. This past summer, he managed to sell 60 tons of acacia wood from the entire plantation to a local trader for VND 1.2 million per ton (or nearly $US 50 per ton).
The ivory-white woods are loaded onto trucks, carried along a mountainside road, and arrive at a wood chip factory called Hung Nguyet Anh, not far from Hai’s plantation.
Fresh logs, the faint fragrance of which still wafts around after being cut, are picked up by a crane and put into a machine where they are chopped into chips ― ready to be used as fuel or raw material for industrial wood pellets.
https://if-cdn.com/rfPRWTnAt a factory located in Central Vietnam, a crane is used to transfer acacia wood into a machine where they are processed and chopped into chips. Video by Thanh Nguyen.
Hung Nguyet Anh presents itself as a company specializing in wood chip production. In 2021, the government of Van Canh district in Binh Dinh province posted an announcement on its website approving the company’s pellet factory project.
Woody biomass—namely wood pellets and chips, along with non-woody agricultural residue—can be classified as a renewable source of energy when burned.
The logic behind considering them as such is that while fossil fuels require millions of years to be formed before they are combusted, biomass fuels can be regrown after being cut and burned in quick succession.
This maintains carbon in trees and soil in theory, and prevents far fewer harmful greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere.
Both United Nations and EU policies that consider woody biomass as carbon neutral, encourage countries to convert their coal-fired power plants to instead burn biomass.
The solution is very appealing to many countries because it’s less expensive than installing wind and solar power plants but still allows them to meet their greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.
Woody biomass energy is therefore marketed as a “net-zero” solution with a bargain price tag, although it occasionally receives bad press and criticism from scientists.
The global system for accounting for emissions since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and countries’ national climate policies do “not count CO2 emitted from tailpipes and smokestacks when bioenergy is being used.” As a result, wood burning is rising worldwide, and in Asia, Japan and South Korea are leading the way.
A plantation in Tien Phuoc district, Quang Nam province in Central Vietnam, is burned to clear the land for acacia planting. The harvested acacia woods will later be processed into wood pellets, serving as a source for generating biomass power. Video by Thanh Nguyen.
According to Vietnamese customs data obtained through a business information service, Hung Nguyet Anh exported wood pellets to Japan-based Mitsui & Co, one of the country’s largest trading companies under the Mitsui Group.
The company’s 2023 report states that it generates 27% of its profit from energy with plans to increase renewables in its business portfolio to over 30% by 2030. Currently, it operates a biomass energy plant in Tomakomai City, Hokkaido.
The report does not identify the sources of materials used in the plant. However, it signals that demand for Vietnamese wood pellets exists in Japan, and this is not limited to one company or one country.
From 2013 to 2022, the export volume of Vietnamese pellets went up 28 times, and the export value skyrocketed 34 times. The material brought the country nearly US $790 million in export turnover in 2022.
Image courtesy of Mekong Eye.
It’s expected that the wood pellet industry will have an export turnover of over US $1 billion in the future, especially when European nations ― the potential export market for Vietnam ― begin to count wood products and other biomass as carbon neutral. Several other countries are also weighing up the future of biomass fuels as a renewable energy source.
However, the production of wood pellets is not as clean as importers claim. The farmer Hai witnesses the deforestation of natural areas in his village, and none of the traders ask him or other farmers about the origin of acacia trees.
“If I sell them less than 100 tons at a time, I don’t have to show any documents. When I buy acacia, I don’t ask them [farmers] if the land where they grow the trees is recognized as production forest by the state or not,” said So, a farmer and a trader in Binh Dinh.
Hung Nguyet Anh only asked for an acacia land certificate if he brought a quantity of several hundred tons of wood.
“We are all poor farmers, if those matters are questioned, no one can sell acacia wood.”
Appetite for wood-burning
Wood pellet products receive certain privileges from the Vietnamese government, which relaxes supervision of production and export processes. The Deputy Director General of the General Department of Forestry admitted in a conference last year that “the origin of [pellets’] raw materials has not been controlled.”
By assuming that pellets are processed from small wood waste and residues like branches and chips in the agricultural and wood industries, export businesses are not required to declare the type of wood being sourced. Export taxes are also exempted for these products.
Last year, the Vietnam Timber and Forest Products Association (Viforest) and the Vietnam General Department of Forestry opposed the government tax consulting agency’s proposal to apply this tax on such products.
As a result, Vietnamese pellets become even more attractive, especially to Asian markets that are not strict about the provenance of imported raw materials. Viforest did not respond to the reporter’s request for comment.
Japan and South Korea account for nearly 100% of the total volume and value of Vietnam’s pellet exports from 2019 to the present date.
Both countries have pledged to accelerate renewable energy and reach “net-zero ” targets by 2050, and they are looking at biomass as an indispensable component of the energy transition despite limited sources of domestic wood.
The drive for long-term energy security has been fierce in Japan in the wake of the 2011 tsunami and subsequent Great East Japan Earthquake and Fukushima nuclear accident.
Wood pellets are stacked next to a factory in Central Vietnam where acacia trees are crushed and transformed into small chips through processing. Video by Thanh Nguyen.
Meanwhile, the appetite for woody-burning has grown exponentially in Japan and South Korea in the past decade due to heavy subsidies for wood sourcing and a biomass feed-in-tariff that have lured in more investors to the sector.
“The boom in building biomass power plants in Japan was primarily driven by the feed-in tariff, which, at its peak in the period 2016-2019, was the highest incentive for wood biomass in the world at ¥24 (then US $0.20) per kilowatt-hour,” said Roger Smith, Japan Director at Mighty Earth, whose work focuses on supporting Japan’s clean energy transition and helping companies achieve deforestation-free supply chains.
In South Korea, according to the Seoul-based non-profit organization Solution For Our Climate (SFOC), biomass is the most heavily incentivized form of renewable energy in the country, receiving policy subsidies greater than those for solar.
Much like South Korea, Japan does not have enough domestic material to feed all its power plants. Cedar trees have been harvested but logging activities cannot be carried out year-round, as it takes decades for the trees to attain a size suitable for biofuel. Moreover, cutting trees during snowy winters is unfeasible due to safety concerns, especially in high-elevation mountainous regions.
This has made Vietnamese wood pellets attractive for biomass expansion due to their economical price, as well as geographic proximity and close economic ties between Vietnam and the two East Asian nations.
Image courtesy of Mekong Eye.
As reported in the South Korean Forestry Department‘s 2021 wood use survey, 78.5% of wood pellets distributed in South Korea were imported. Of these, 62.6% were from Vietnam.
Japan’s trade statistics show that around 30% of fuel input for biomass power generation is currently supplied by imported wood pellets and chips. Vietnam is the country’s second-largest supplier of wood pellets, while Japan is the second-largest customer of Vietnamese wood chips after China.
Vietnam even has the potential to surpass the world’s major wood pellets exporter Canada. A study by the Central Electricity Industry Research Institute and Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology indicated that using pellets produced in Vietnam is more economical than those produced in the Northern American country because of the competitive price.
Unknown origin
The US-based non-profit organization Forest Trend reported that domestically grown acacia accounted for 70% of the proportion of wood species used as the raw material for pellets 2in 021.
Acacia also dominates Vietnam’s wood-pelleted production sector. But of the total 2.35 million hectares of acacia Vietnam planted by 2020, only 15% have achieved Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification―which signifies that the material has been sourced from responsibly managed forests.
Only a few Japanese importers require pellets from Vietnam to have FSC certificates. Not a single South Korean firm does.
Additionally, only a restricted number of plantation areas are certified by both national and international certifiers. This is the case with the VSFC/PEFC certification scheme, which is a collaboration between the Vietnam Sustainable Forest Certificate (VSFC) and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).
Based on data from September 2022, the same report points out that there were several pellet factories in Central Vietnam that used materials originating from natural forests.
In other provinces, most traders, truck drivers, and farmers interviewed said that factories do not question them about the origin of the acacia wood they deliver.
“What the factory cares about is whether the acacia trees reach five years of maturity, whether the diameter is over six centimeters, and whether the tree trunk is dry. No one asks where they are grown,” said Tu, a farmer and acacia trader in Dak Lak of Vietnam’s Central Highlands.
Tu often sells acacia wood to a factory named Nam Van Phong in Ninh Thuan province.
In a phone interview, the Deputy Director of the company, Vu Ngoc Su, stated, “the forests that the company purchases are all FSC certified.”
Workers use trucks to transport acacia wood from the field to the wood processing factory in Central Vietnam. Image by Thanh Nguyen.
According to Vietnam Customs data obtained through a business information service, Nam Van Phong’s customer is ITOCHU, a corporation that supplies wood pellets to many biomass energy plants in Japan, including Hyuga Biomass Power in Osaka and Tahara Green Biomass in Tokyo.
ITOCHU announced in its 2023 annual report that it had completely withdrawn from thermal coal interests during its current mid-term management plan period.
The company imports about 500,000 tons of pellets from Vietnam every year, of which 300,000 tons are from Binh Dinh. It also revealed a plan to plant a timber forest and build a wood pellet production factory in Central Vietnam.
The Vietnamese customs data also reveal that one of ITOCHU’s pellet suppliers in Vietnam is Asia’s biggest wood pellet producer, An Viet Phat Energy, which was blocked by FSC last year for deliberately making false claims about a large volume of wood pellets sold in 2020.
The company created purchase documents with all the materials used in products bearing the FSC label, although it also used wood harvested in non-FSC forests. The Forest Stewardship Council confirmed via email that it has not yet unblocked An Viet Phat.
An Viet Phat Energy is also one of the four largest pellet suppliers to South Korea. A 2022 report by Advocates for Public Interest Law says the company’s clients include SGC Energy, Emerging Global, Hyundai Rivat, GS Global, and Samsung C&T ― some of which directly operate biomass power plants.
An investigation by the Korean Center for Investigative Journalism Newstapa showed Samsung C&T provided about 95,000 tons of wood pellets produced by An Viet Phat Energy to four public South Korean power generation companies―Nambu, Southeast, Western and Korea Midland Power―from 2019 to 2022.
South Korea has established a legal standard for importing timber products, but this regulation only verifies legality and does not address sustainability or environmental impact. According to SFOC, as long as the products are considered legal in the producer country like in Vietnam, South Korea sees no trouble in importing them.
“The South Korea Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) so far has overlooked the sustainability of woody burning. There’s a lot of lobbying, cartel and dirty businesses happening in Korea, especially around the forestry sector,” said Hansae Song, Bioenergy & Land Use Program Officer of SFOC. “The MOTIE didn’t want to deal with this, but now it is facing mounting pressure in Korea.”
In Central Vietnam’s factory, wood chips are accumulated in the rear of a three-wheel vehicle used to transport acacia wood to the processing machine. Image by Thanh Nguyen.
An Viet Phat Energy has been criticized for its level of commitment to ensuring environmental safety in its production activities. One of its factories, located in Phu Tho province, 100 kilometers northwest of Hanoi, has been accused by local people of causing air and water pollution.
In 2021, this factory was fined VND 35 million (about US $1,400) and had its operations suspended due to violations of Vietnamese environmental law. But the factory has continued its operation while the pollution it caused has not been resolved.
Despite the controversy, An Viet Phat Energy continues to operate and will in fact expand its production scale to a total of 10 pellet factories. One of these received a loan from the state-owned Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam.
In a phone interview, CEO Andy Bui affirmed that Japanese and South Korean companies continue to purchase wood pellets produced by the company.
“We possess records validating the origin of raw materials used in wood pellet production. Specifically for the Japanese market, our products hold VSFC/PEFC,” said Bui.
Roger Smith from the Mighty Earth believes that other companies are likely engaging in similar practices as An Viet Phat Energy.
“The issue here lies on the Japanese side. They are supposed to demonstrate that the production was conducted legally, but they don’t thoroughly check in any meaningful way,” Smith added.
Ensure traceability
Vietnam-based companies like Nam Van Phong, Hung Nguyen Anh, and Hao Hung are said to hold FSC certification.
For many years, Chinese company Hao Hung has been one of the familiar names among the traders in Vietnam’s Central region, which has turned into an acacia-growing hub.
The company’s main production and business sectors include wood pellets and chips that are exported around the world, according to information provided on its website.
Since this summer, its subsidiary in Quang Nam province, named Hoang Ngan Quang Nam, has changed its material input purchasing strategy to ensure its product quality follows the requirements of its Japanese customers.
Acacia trees stand against the backdrop of natural forests in the mountainous region of Tien Phuoc district as part of Quang Nam province, Vietnam. Image by Thanh Nguyen.
“In the past, they bought all types of wood, regardless of sizes, including scrap branches,” said Nham, a 30-year-old acacia supplier to the Chinese company for the past six years.
“But now the selection is stricter, only acacia trunks with a diameter of six centimeters or more are selected, and small branches and crowns are returned.”
Hoang Ngan Quang Nam has required drivers delivering acacia wood to fill out a “Forest Product Declaration Form” that clarifies the full name and phone number of acacia growers, buyers, and transporters, as well as the origin, dimensions, and wood species involved.
Starting from February this year, the completion of the form is required under Vietnam’s Forestry Law when parties buy and sell industrial timber. It’s part of the Vietnamese government’s effort to ensure the management and traceability of forest products.
However, Nham confirmed that the factories will unlikely investigate further if the information provided on the form is falsified.
“If the declared information of the grower is falsified, I guess they [the factory staff] will not know,” he said.
On numerous occasions, he has witnessed the acacia wood he transports to Hoang Ngan Quang Nam’s factory being sourced from natural forests on the mountaintop, where local farmers clear land to scrape by. And in so doing, apparently, answer the call for a clean energy transition.
Note: For personal safety reasons, the farmers, traders, and drivers are referred to by their first names.
This story was produced with support from Internews’ Earth Journalism Network for the “It’s a Wash” collaborative reporting project and RIN.
***
pulitzercenter.org – NOVEMBER 19, 2023
Part 2: A Thorny Dilemma: Acacia Plantations in Vietnam May Not Be All That Green
Bao-Uyen Vo-Kieu
RAINFOREST INVESTIGATIONS FELLOW
In the central Vietnam province of Quang Nam, a plantation is cleared in readiness for the planting of acacia trees. Image by Thanh Nguyen. Vietnam.
The country’s embrace of acacia plantations has lifted some smallholder households out of poverty. But it comes at a cost to the environment and even lives lost
QUANG NAM, VIETNAM ― The fast-growing and economical acacia has spread in Central Vietnam in response to the global call for wood pellets to replace coal-fired energy. But it has left biodiversity loss and, in some cases, even death in its wake.
Source: Mapbox. Image courtesy of Mekong Eye.
Ho Thi Hong, a Mnong ethnic woman in Bac Tra My district of Quang Nam province, lost eight family members in the deadly landslides 2020’s rainy season.
“That afternoon, a loud explosion signaled a landslide. It was followed by mud, trees, rocks and water crashing down on my village. The stream turned into a fierce flow, sweeping my husband and me away when we were in the fields near the forest,” she recalled.
“We were lucky to survive and were stuck in the forest for one night. When we returned to the village the next day, I no longer saw my children and grandchildren. Our house was also no longer there.”
Her village was buried under the mudslide from a nearby mountain ― part of which was covered in acacia.
Local authorities admitted that the catastrophe partly originated from the uncontrolled expansion of acacia plantations, which drive Central Vietnam’s economy, but are also linked to erosion and biodiversity loss.
Despite the human casualties from the landslide, acacia cultivation resumed three years later on the mountain, which abuts the graves of Hong’s loved ones.
Ho Thi Hong, an ethnic Mnong woman residing in Bac Tra My district within Vietnam’s central Quang Nam province, stands before the mountain where acacia trees have been planted. She tragically lost eight of her family members in the 2020 landslide, a catastrophe believed to be associated with the extensive presence of acacia plantations in the mountains, contributing to erosion issues in the area. Image by Thanh Nguyen. Vietnam.
Hong had never seen an acacia tree before the fast-growing plants mushroomed around her village more than 30 years ago. Central Vietnam’s provinces ― such as Quang Nam, Quang Ngai, and Binh Dinh ― are today the epicenter of the country’s acacia plantations.
This is a result of high-level policies that began three decades ago, when the Vietnamese government implemented large-scale afforestation projects. The most notable were the US$68 million “Greening the Barren Hills Program,” which lasted from 1992 to 1997 and the $1.5 billion reforestation program that aimed to add 5 million hectares of forests from 1998 to 2010.
The programs intended to recover forests that were severely destroyed by bombs and the toxin Agent Orange dropped by the US military during the Vietnam War, as well as by encroachment and logging in the post-war era.
However, the programs have been criticized for their focus on establishing new plantations rather than supporting natural forest regeneration. The government allocated lands, known as production forest areas, to smallholder farmers who then planted monocultures of exotic tree species.
Several Australasian acacia species were introduced into southern Vietnam in the 1960s for forestry trials and plantation and then became the most popular trees used in forest plantations throughout the country. Vietnam is covered by the largest area of cultivated acacia in the world accounting for 65-85% of the nation’s 4.4 million ha of plantations.
Acacia became more widespread when the government classified it as a strategic crop for the country’s poverty alleviation efforts in the 2000s. The plan was even been sponsored by several countries and international organizations, including the Food and Agriculture Organization and the Australian government.
“They [acacia trees] have undoubtedly been a motor for local livelihoods but acacia plantations have replaced different land covers, including marginal crop fields, bushland, and natural forests,” said Nguyen Hai Van, a research fellow on forest and nature conservation policies at Wyss Academy for Nature at University of Bern, Switzerland.
Loveable trees
The acacia frenzy in Central Vietnam has been driven by rising prices following ever-higher demand for its wood.
The trees initially served paper and furniture manufacturers when they were first planted, but the past decade has seen a shift in plantations being used for wood pellets.
These are then primarily sourced for biomass power plants, which allows the industry involved to claim that the entire process is “renewable”–the emissions are comparatively lower than those from fossil fuels, although this is based on a number of assumptions that may not always apply.
Both Japan and South Korea have been the major importers of Vietnam’s wood pellets as both countries are looking at biomass as their pathways to “net-zero” carbon emissions.
“Acacia is easy to grow, has a short-growth cycle, and requires low capital. It’s perfectly suitable for poor households,” said Nguyen Su, a forest restoration expert from the Vietnam Afforestation and Reforestation Social Company – a nonprofit company that raises funds for forest planting and restoration projects using native tree species.
According to experts, the profit made from growing acacia trees is hundreds of times higher than agricultural tree varieties. It has helped many households improve their livelihoods while also supporting the regional rural economy and increasing national export revenue.
Acacia is also adored by investors and local governments because of its economic benefits.
Investors often choose fast-growing acacia trees, instead of native species, when launching afforestation projects that compensate for their activities involving forest clearance―including the construction of hydropower plants and other infrastructure development.
A range of afforestation projects have failed when planting native perennial plants because of unsuitable soil preparation and lack of care in the post-project period.“Acacia trees are tolerant of adverse soil and climate conditions, and only take four to five years to reach harvest time,” said Su.
A farmer examines Acacia saplings in nurseries that have proliferated in Central Vietnam due to the recent surge in acacia cultivation. Image by Vo Kieu Bao Uyen. Vietnam.
However, this yield comes at a significant cost that can’t be measured in dollars and dongs. To plant acacia trees, smallholder farmers have cut down natural forests to make way for cultivation and intensified deforestation on a massive scale.
“In the past, it was because we were so poor that we had to cut down the forest to have more land [for plantation,]” recalls an acacia farmer, Hai, adding that he is allowed to farm on a two-hectare plot within the forest production areas in Binh Dinh province.
“If we only relied on the land allocated by the state, how could our family with three children live? Many families here did not even access these lands.”
These days, many acacia plantations are the result of illegal encroachment on natural forests, and as such, are not issued the certificate of land use rights by the state. That is the reason that only a small number of acacia areas have Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification.
FSC certifies sustainable material sourcing from forests that are managed by strict environmental, social, and economic standards. Having the certificate of land use rights is a prerequisite for Vietnam acacia plantations to obtain FSC certification.
In an effort to increase the number of forest areas acquiring international forestry certification, the Vietnam Forest Certification Scheme (VFCS), established by the Vietnam General Department of Forestry in 2018, has collaborated with the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).
The endorsement of VFCS by PEFC has facilitated adherence to international standards, enabling Vietnamese timber products bearing the joint VFCS/PEFC certification to access various markets, including the EU.
Notably, unlike the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), this scheme does not explicitly specify the land use rights of the forests where the products originate.
FSC and PEFC have both come under fire in recent years for not being strict about their standards and have been accused of “greenwashing” timber in other countries.
Barren patches of acacia plantations are a frequent sight in the mountainous regions of Nam Tra My district in Vietnam’s central Quang Nam province, where landslides occur frequently, especially during the rainy season. Image by Thanh Nguyen. Vietnam.
“Our research in some communes of Central Vietnam reveals that more than half of acacia plots in these areas, despite being used for over a decade, are yet to be officially certified due to the complicated history of forest-related land use change”, said Nguyen Hai Van.
“It thus is still the biggest obstacle for acacia smallholders’ eligibility, together with finance and other factors, to participate in any sustainable forest certification schemes.”
She surmises that the local authorities have been stuck with a dilemma. On the one hand, they cannot issue certificates for these areas that are in a “gray area” outside of the government’s land use planning because it could lead to a precedent of small-scale land grabs or further forest encroachment.
Yet it is also impossible to force local villagers to give up acacia and restore the forestland given how long it’s already been used for plantations. Still, there are no concrete solutions for the problem, as some local authorities tacitly accept the status quo land tenure arrangement: “untitled but not informal.”
Dangers of acacia
According to the Vietnam Forestry Institute, the extensive cultivation of acacia trees causes various ecological and environmental consequences.
The exotic trees are not friendly to native plant species as they outcompete nearby native vegetation. They have shallow root systems that enable them to rob moisture from other plants while degrading the underlying soil, which increases the risk of landslides, especially when they are planted along slopes.
This is precisely what happened to Ho Thi Hong, the Mnong woman who lost her family and home mentioned earlier. Disasters were reported in other Central Vietnamese provinces as well in 2020.
From 2010 to 2023, the forested areas in the mountainous regions of Bac Tra My in Vietnam’s central Quang Nam province underwent significant transformation, being largely replaced by extensive acacia plantations. Video by Kuek Ser Kuang Keng/Rainforest Investigations Network. Source: Google Earth.
“The acacia forests cannot replace natural forests, especially in areas prone to natural disasters and climate change impacts like the Central region,” said Su, the forest restoration expert.
He pointed out the method of acacia cultivation and harvesting will accelerate wildfires and ultimately carbon emissions, as farmers often burn vegetation to clear land and supply nutrients for the tree’s next crop cycle. This practice has also led to exposed soils after harvest.
Groundcover with vegetation would normally prevent erosion during the rainy season when the acacias are mere saplings. Consequently, after only three to four crop cycles without rotation, the soil becomes completely depleted of nutrients.
Van, the research fellow on forest, adds that soil degradation tends to be compounded by the sloped terrain often used for wattle cultivation. This is compounded by the strong monsoon and cyclone systems that occur between September and December, which produce heavy rainfall in Central Vietnam.
Furthermore, compared to natural forests, known for their high species diversity and endemism (they live only in a very particular location), a monoculture plantation of acacia hosts precious little native flora or fauna and has very little direct value for conservation.
Monoculture plantations of acacia are believed by experts to be poor at sequestering carbon dioxide as well. Only natural forests, with diverse plant species, can do this job well.
The plantation located in Quang Nam province in central Vietnam, is burned to clear the land for acacia planting. Image by Thanh Nguyen. Vietnam.
A recent study indicated that globally such land cover is 70% more effective than plantations at storing carbon, meaning that restoring them is an essential way to slow rising global temperatures.
There is perhaps an irony in clearing natural forests for the purposes of planting monocultures, which are then cut down and replanted to fuel international wood pellet demand. A demand premised on reducing carbon emissions in the energy sector.
Threat amidst prospect
The acacia farming hills are not shaken despite its severe environmental impact.
As there does not appear to be an end in sight to the Russo-Ukrainian war, the global sanctions against Russia’s oil and gas industries have sparked demand for wood pellets and chips used for fuel and power generation. The global effort to accelerate the green energy transition will likely also drive more interest in wood pellets used in generating biomass power.
Both of these forces are leading the EU to spend billions of dollars annually to subsidize wood-burning biomass energy.
Japan, on the other hand, is the biggest wood pellet buyer from Vietnam as part of its policy to use biomass for achieving a low-emission future.
Many of its companies in the sector retain long-term contracts with Vietnamese producers to meet its increasing demand for pellets, which is estimated to be about three times higher by 2030. Yet, the integrity of wood energy has never been fully acknowledged.
Climate scientists provided evidence that wood burning emits about 18% more carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour of energy produced than coal combustion. Many studies also consistently indicate that harvesting immature trees for bioenergy increases greenhouse gas emissions that can then take between decades and centuries to offset.
Nguyen Hai Van has highlighted wood pellets as a means of converting waste and debris into green energy.
However, she raises concerns that while people often purchase wood pellets under the impression of making a sustainable choice, it actually contributes to a phenomenon known as transition leakage. This occurs when efforts towards a green transition in one country or sector result in costs being transferred to other countries or sectors.
“More evidence on cross-sector leakages associated with climate change solutions is necessary. It will serve as a crucial entry point for discussions on ‘loss and damage’ along with carbon governance—two of the most anticipated topics for discussion at approaching UNFCCC COP28,” she emphasized.
During the harvest season in Vietnam’s central Quang Nam province, acacia woods are piled up in a cleared space. These woods are subsequently transported to a factory where they will undergo the process of being crushed into small chips. Image by Thanh Nguyen. Vietnam.
Investigations by environmental NGOs in the EU show wood pellet production can cause large clear-cutting of natural and old-growth forests, with evidence of thousands of whole trees being piled up at the mills.
In South Korea early last year, a report by SFOC and the Korea-based non-profit organizations identified high deforestation risks in the export supply chains of woody biomass from Vietnam and Indonesia destined for the East Asian country.
“This highlights an aspect of climate injustice. While Koreans benefit from the electricity produced by power plants impacting the environment, Vietnam bears the burden of deforestation and logging trees associated with the power generation activities of Korea”, said Hansae Song, Bioenergy & Land Use Program Officer of SFOC.
“First of all, biomass shouldn’t be treated as renewable. Providing excessive subsidies to biomass is not something that the South Korea government should do with the taxpayers’ money”, he added.
In April, 90 environmental NGOs in Japan and overseas called on the country to take measures against co-firing biomass plants, which activists say encourage deforestation in pellet-exporting countries. They also demand that Japan address carbon emissions from biofuels and incorporate the ensuing calculations into the country’s carbon accounting.
“In the long run, Japan will give up some of these costly and ineffective renewable energy strategies”, said Roger Smith, Japan Director at Mighty Earth, one of the organizations that signed the statement, “Co-firing of Biomass in Coal Plants or Conversion of Coal Power Plants to Dedicated Biomass Power Plants is Greenwashing.”
“The crucial question is that when they realize that this path is dead, how long will it take for Japan to shift course and if it takes too long, we suffer from worsened climate change.”
Many acacia farmers in Vietnam have felt the environmental threats too.
Years of intensive acacia farming have degraded soil and led to declining yields. Local farmers used to be able to harvest between 100 and 120 tons of wood per hectare a decade ago. Now they can only get two-thirds of that production.
With plummeting harvests, Hai, the farmer, estimates that he would have to grow acacia for two consecutive crop cycles, lasting five years each before he’d be able to turn a profit. He can’t earn supplemental income from other crops as nothing else manages to coexist with acacia under the plantation’s all-consuming canopy.
“Acacia used to feed my family, but in the future, it will leave us nothing to earn from,” said Hai.
Note: For personal safety reasons, the farmers, traders, and drivers are referred to by their first names.
Đọt Chuối Non 