Illegal Logging

Illegal logging violates
international, national or regional
laws. Illegal activities can include
logging, transportation, purchase
and sale of timber.
The timber felling itself may be
illegal and can involve:
Using corrupt means to gain
access to forests;
Extraction without permission or
from a protected area;
The cutting of protected species;
or
The extraction of timber in excess
of agreed limits.
Illegalities may also occur during
transport, processing and export,
and include fraudulent
declaration to customs, and the
avoidance of taxes and other
charges.
"Destructive but legal" logging
Legal logging does not necessarily
mean ecologically or socially
sustainable logging. Half of the
world's forests have disappeared.
Only 20 percent remain as
relatively undisturbed and intact.
This 20 percent contains the
natural habitat of two-thirds of
the Earth's known terrestrial
species, and is the home for many
indigenous peoples and other
forest-dependent communities.
The world's remaining forests are
disappearing at an alarming rate
due to both legal and illegal
logging. Every second, an area of
forest equal to the area of the
Orange Bowl stadium is destroyed
- over 23 million acres a year.
Governments at every level
urgently need to make a greater
commitment to the protection and
sustainable use of the the world's
forests by passing and enforcing
stricter forest protection laws.

A global problem

Some estimates suggest that the
illegal timber trade may comprise
over a tenth of the total global
timber trade, worth more than
$150 billion a year. Exact figures
are difficult to obtain, given the
illegal nature of the activity.
Reliable estimates indicate that
more than half of all logging
activities in particularly
vulnerable regions - the Amazo Basin, Central Africa, Southeast
Asia, the Russian Federation - are
illegal.

Quick facts:
A 1998 joint UK-Indonesian study
of the timber industry in
Indonesia estimated that about
40 percent of production was
illegal, with a value in excess of
$365 million. More recent
estimates suggest that 88 percent
of logging in the country is illegal
in some way.
In Brazil, 80 percent of logging in
the Amazon violates government
controls, At the core of illegal
logging is widespread corruption.
Often referred to as 'green gold',
mahogany can fetch over US
$1,600 m3. Illegal mahogany
opens the door for illegal logging
of other tree species, and for
widespread exploitation of the
Brazilian Amazon.
The World Bank estimates that 80
percent of logging operations are
illegal in Bolivia and 42 percent in
Colombia, while in Peru, illegal
logging equals 80 percent of all
activities.
Research carried out by WWF International in 2002 show that
in Africa, rates of illegal logging
vary from 50 percent for
Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea
to 70 percent in Gabon and 80
percent in Liberia - where
revenues from the timber industry
also fueled the civil war.


Solutions

There are several solutions to the
problem of illegal logging. They
include enforcement and creation
of international and national
laws, as well as independent
timber certification companies
that work with timber companies
to assess and verify the legal,
ecological and social
sustainability of any timber
operation and its wood products.
By exerting influence through the
supply chain, governments have
enormous power to encourage
responsible forest management
and reduce the demand for
illegally sourced forest products.
Government purchases account
for a substantial proportion of world trade in timber products. In
2001, U.S. state and local
government purchasing exceeded
$1.22 trillion, more than 11
percent of the total U. S. gross
domestic product.