So Have Total Imports Increased or Decreased?
If the log and plywood imports are merely added up, it may appear that Japan's overall tropical timber imports have decreased to a fair extent in recent years.

However, it takes more than a cubic meter of logs to manufacture a cubic meter of plywood. Exact figures on the yields of plywood manufacture in Malaysia and Indonesia are not available, but if we assume that it takes 1.8 m3 of logs to make 1 m3 of plywood (a coefficient used in some statistics of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization), we find that the total imports in roundwood equivalents (RWE) have not declined much. Even if improved milling technology nowadays achieves better yields than this, import volumes are still far above sustainable levels.

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