Dynamics of woodchip trade between Australia and Japan, and need for international cooperation of forest advocates

Japan imports more than 25 million cubic-meters of woodchips from various countries in the world to use these chips as raw materials for paper. The significant amount of the imports makes Japan the biggest woodchip importer in the world. Japan has many woodchip exporters, and Australia is one of its important exporters. However, logging operations for exporting woodchips in Australia have had negative impacts on Australian native forests. The significance of woodchip demand from Japan and the relationship between demand and the impacts on the native forests has led the people who are concerned about this problem to view Japan as the catalyst. Australian forest advocates have addressed this environmental problem for years. However, their efforts were not always effective. Negative impacts of the logging for exporting woodchip continues. This is partly because of the complexity of the issue and the lack of international cooperation with Japanese forest advocates. The complexity impedes the advocates from understanding the issue more deeply. This reduces the levels of the effectiveness of their strategies. The lack of international cooperation limits the range of the strategies that the forest advocates can adopt and implement. Without such cooperation, the Australian advocates are not be able to reach Japanese citizens, the primary end user of their woodchips. Deeper understanding of the destruction of Australian native forests and international cooperation with Japanese forest advocates are vital for Australian forest advocates. Paving the way for the Australian advocates, this paper has two purposes. One is to analyze the causes of the issues in Australia in connection with Japan's woodchip trade. The other is to investigate the challenges to international cooperation between Australia and Japan. The analysis and investigation would help the Australian advocates address the challenges to work on minimizing the negative impacts of the trade on their native forest more effectively.