The forests in Southeast Asia are known to be a rich source of timber suitable for a variety of purposes. Timbre can be used as materials in the form of lumber products such as furniture, plywood, paper and pulp, or are used for energy in the form of wood fuel. Due to this, Southeast Asian countries are now faced with the problem of depleting their natural forest resources to meet global demands for timber.

 

 

Other causes behind the worrying rate of deforestation include illegal logging and land clearing for agricultural activities. Illegal logging refers to logging when the timber is harvested, processed, transported, brought or sold in violation of national laws (World Wildlife Fund).  50-90% of all forestry activities in key producer tropical forests, such as those of the Amazon Basin, Central Africa and Southeast Asia are attributed to illegal logging. Across Southeast Asia, illegal logging is repeated, with huge quantities of stolen timber flowing across the region’s borders and onto the global market. For example, 40-61% of timber production in Indonesia is believed to stem from illegal logging (World Wildlife Fund).

 

 

 

        Tragedy of the Commons

The over exploitation of these forests for timber can be explained as a case of tragedy of the commons. 

 

 

Hardin first proposed and defined the tragedy of commons  as the consumption of a natural resource by each of many individuals who have unrestricted access to the resource, which eventually leads to the destruction of the resource (Gardner and Stern, 2002). In the case of the logging industry in Southeast Asia, firms and individuals (farmers) are self interested and gain from the cutting down of trees. Since the common resource of trees are large, firms and individuals see little harm from their own use.  Therefore, when population and utilization of burning these forests reach high levels, trees are rapidly depleted with no care.