Activist group Global Witness said that Tokyo risks "falling down on its pledge to stage an
environmentally sustainable 2020 Olympics due to the import of illegally
felled timber from Southeast Asia," according to Humber & Kuwako of BLOOMBERG. Some of Japan's "biggest construction companies buy plywood
from Borneo, where the rain forest is being logged inside a national
park and on land set aside for native tribes." Global Witness said that Japan is "the world's biggest importer of plywood from tropical rain forests." Global Witness said, "The Japanese government has been aggressively selling the green
credentials of the Tokyo Games, but the secret of Japan's construction
industry -- its reliance on rain forest timber logged destructively in
Sarawak -- is being left out of the rhetoric" (BLOOMBERG, 12/9). KYODO reported Tokyo Governor Yoichi Masuzoe on Tuesday "cautiously welcomed" the
IOC's decision to "open up the event to new
sports but spoke of anxiety over the costs of providing them" in '20.
Masuzoe said he will have to discuss the "possible inclusion of new disciplines with the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee" (KYODO, 12/9).
