ABSTRACT
Forests and the forest industry in South, Southeast and East Asia are globally significant in many respects. These regions contain around 55 per cent of the world’s population and include the world’s two most populous countries. Some Asian economies are the world’s richest and most rapidly expanding, while others remain persistently poor. Rapid economic growth in South and East Asia, combined with increasingly strict domestic environmental forest policies, have made these regions leading hubs in the international trade of both Siberian and tropical timber (Zhu et al, 2004; ITTO, 2006b; McDermott et al, 2008a).
