Watch part two

It is a crisis of alarming scale.

Logging on the Solomon Islands is seeing trees cut down at four times the sustainable rate.

The industry is accused of causing enormous ecological and social damage.

Many of the problems are believed to stem from an over-compliant government, dubious concessions to logging companies, bribes instead of taxes and extensive under-pricing of logs that are taken out of the country.

Ironically, looming on the horizon is the prospect of the end of the logging industry, such has been the scale of the tree felling, with experts warning that the country may run out of commercially exploitable trees in five years time.

With timber providing almost 70 per cent of exports, the fear is of economic collapse.

101 East explores the damage and the dangers of logging in the Solomon Islands.

This episode of 101 East aired from Thursday, January 1, 2009.