YANGON, June 1 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar parliament has passed a motion to speed up afforestation and to ban illegal logging nationwide in order to avert the impact of climate change, the official Global New Light of Myanmar reported Thursday.
With the aim to upgrade conservation of forests across the country and expand the projects year by year in other regions, the motion urged the government to implement Green Land Project in Nay Pyi Taw, Yangon, Mandalay, and Pyi Oo Lwin.
The country urgently needs to ban gangs of smuggling woods and to tighten security with special forces for combating illegal logging.
Myanmar is one of the most resource-rich countries in Southeast Asia. However, statistics show that forest coverage in Myanmar dropped to 42.92 percent in 2015 from over 57 percent in 1990.
The country has restricted wood logs export to encourage more export of value-added wood products since 2014.
