6 / 72
6
SUMMARY
Forests worldwide bind CO
2
and store it – so called Green carbon – and help mitigate
climate change. However, deforestation accounts for an estimated 17 per cent of global
carbon emissions: about 1.5 times greater than emissions from all the world’s air, road,
rail and shipping traffic combined.
The vast majority of deforestation and illegal logging takes
place in the tropical forests of the Amazon basin, Central Africa
and Southeast Asia. Recent studies into the extent of illegal log-
ging estimate that illegal logging accounts for 50–90 per cent
of the volume of all forestry in key producer tropical countries
and 15–30 per cent globally. Meanwhile, the economic value of
global illegal logging, including processing, is estimated to be
worth between US$ 30 and US$ 100 billion, or 10–30 per cent
of global wood trade.
A number of certification schemes and programmes have
evolved to reduce illegal logging. These schemes, such as vol-
untary trade agreements including the EU Forest Law Enforce-
ment, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership
Agreements (VPAs), or Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)
certification, have been successful in bringing stakeholders
together and generating incentives for legal exports and more
sustainable forestry.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is increasingly being used
by states to ensure that trade in listed timber species is legal,
sustainable and traceable. Around 350 tree species are now in-
cluded in the three CITES Appendices, and trade in their prod-
ucts is therefore subject to regulation to avoid utilization that
is incompatible with their survival. CITES is also working with
the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) to pro-
mote sustainable forest management and to build the capacity
of developing states to effectively implement the Convention as
it relates to listed tree species.
The main aim of the above mechanisms are to promote sus-
tainable trade. With the exception of CITES, they were not
designed to combat organized crime and are not effective in
combating illegal logging, corruption and laundering of ille-
gal timber in tropical regions. Other incentives and subsidies
to offer alternative incomes are unlikely to be effective when
illegal logging and laundering offer much higher profits and
very low risk. Widespread collusive corruption from local of-
ficials to the judiciary, combined with decentralized govern-
ment structures in many tropical countries, provide little or
no economic incentive for illegal loggers and corrupt officials
to change their practices.
To become effective, voluntary trade programmes and the ef-
fective implementation of CITES, must be combined with an
international law enforcement investigative and operational ef-
fort in collaboration with domestic police and investigative task
forces in each country. This is to ensure that a local decline in
illegal logging is not offset by increases elsewhere, as interna-
tional cartels move to new sources of illegal timber.
In the last five years, illegal logging has moved from direct
illegal logging to more advanced methods of concealment
and timber laundering. In this report more than 30 ways of
conducting illegal logging, laundering, selling and trading il-
legal logs are described. Primary methods include falsifica-
tion of logging permits, bribes to obtain logging permits (in
some instances noted as US$ 20–50,000 per permit), logging
beyond concessions, hacking government websites to obtain
transport permits for higher volumes or transport, laundering