The Current Status of Japan's Overseas Industrial Forest Plantation Projects

In Japan. the percentage of recycled paper in paper manufacturing and the percentage of imported pulpwood in all pulpwood both exceeded 50% in 1989, and these figures never appear going down again. Around that time. Japanese pulp and paper companies began overseas industrial forest plantation projects, and approximately ten years have passed since then. At this moment, projects are found in eight countries with the total area reaching to 258,000 ha at the end of 1998. In the past, they were relying upon the imported wood materials out of natural and artificial resources. But nowadays in order to reduce its dependency, most of our overseas industrial plantation projects have been commenced by targeting to import wood chips out of own plantation. Meanwhile, an increasing number of electric power companies and automobile companies have begun to participate in overseas forestry projects after it was decided that the amount of CO2 sequestration by forests would be internationally recognized as an offset to greenhouse gas emission at COP 3 conference in Kyoto (1997). Therefore, in order to promote further plantation it is required to get and to handle accurate information to settle many unsolved issues.