The environmental issue is likely to have a certain degree of impact on trade and marketing of teak wood and products. Strong and continuing pressure from environmentalists is raising a general awareness amongst consumers of the alarming depletion and destruction of forests in the tropics. Although the destruction of tropical forests is the result of wider socio-economic issues, many developing tropical countries are being pressured to ensure that timber comes only from forests under sustainable management.With teak being a tropical hardwood species and subject to such pressures, this makes it more essential to adopt appropriate logging policies in order to ensure the future of teak resources. As far as Myanmar is concerned, the process of exploiting teak has continued on a commercial scale since 1856. However, Myanmar has been able to manage its teak forests on a sustained yield basis and has continued to supply the need of the global market consistently to date.

The application of the Myanmar Selection System in the management of its teak resources has proven effective in 139 years of experience. The Myanmar logging system, deploying some 4,500 elephants in combination with bulldozers and skidders, is demonstrated as environment friendly. It causes least disturbance to the natural ecosystem, from which only selected mature teak trees are extracted for the economic benefit of the country. On a global basis, the adoption of a selection felling system with prescribed diameter limits is also quite common in extraction from the natural forests. In order to ensure the future of teak resources, Myanmar experience indicates that:

Another environmental aspect in favour of teak is the practice of plantation silviculture in many tropical countries of the world. Man has much more control over planting trees with selected provenance at most suitable sites. As plantation forestry is common around the world, many manufacturers, retailers and consumers, especially in Europe, respond favourably when timber comes from managed sustainable plantations.On the whole, teak wood has a good name environmentally and commercially, mainly due to the fact that the majority of teak wood comes from natural forests under sustainable management systems in Myanmar and from teak plantations in Indonesia. Trade interventions, such as proposals to introduce certain labelling and certification schemes in the timber market, now under discussion at ITTO meetings, are not expected to hinder the teak wood trade, as the extraction of teak does not have significant environmental effect. This kind of intervention, however, motivates and keeps foresters under pressure to manage teak forests more carefully on a sustainable basis.