Out of the woods: the illegal trade in tropical timber and a European trade hub

Global Crime

Volumn 13, Issue 3, 2012, Pages 191-212

  Bisschop, Lieselot ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY COLLEGE GHENT   (Belgium)

^b GHENT UNIVERSITY   (Belgium)

Author keywords

case study; illegal timber; legal illegal interfaces; transnational environmental crime

Indexed keywords

EID: 84865407013     PISSN: 17440572     EISSN: 17440580     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/17440572.2012.701836     Document Type: Article

References (146)

1. Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, adopted at the UNCED in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June 3-14, 1992.
2. Luca Tacconi, 'The Problem of Illegal Logging', in Illegal Logging: Law Enforcement, Livelihoods and the Timber Trade, ed. Luca Tacconi (London and Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2007), 1-16.
3. The United States has the Lacey Act which prohibits imports of illegal timber. The EU has the European Timber Regulation (entry into force in 2013) which holds importers accountable to prove the legality of the timber they import (due diligence). This is a successor to the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan of the EU with the Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs). The CITES is the only international legal basis for the trade in some timber species, regulating import, export and reexport of species with permits to avoid endangering the species' survival.
4. FAO, Global Forest Resources Assessment 2010 (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2010).
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6. CIE, A Final Report to Inform a Regulation Impact Statement for the Proposed New Policy on Illegally Logged Timber (Canberra & Sydney: CIE, 2010).
7. Arnoldo Contreras-Hermosilla, Richard Doornbosch, and Michael Lodge, The Economics of Illegal Logging and Associated Trade (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2007).
8. R. A. Houghton, Emissions (and Sinks) of Carbon from Land-Use Change (Estimates of National Sources and Sinks of Carbon Resulting from Changes in Land Use, 1950 to 2000) (Falmouth, MA: World Resource Institute - Woods Hole Resource Center, 2003).
9. L. Peskett, D. Brown, and C. Luttrell, Can Payments for Avoided Deforestation to Tackle Climate Change also Benebit the Poor? (London: Overseas Development Institute, 2006).
10. UNEP, 'Forests: Investing in Natural Capital', in Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication (United Nations Environment Programme, 2011), 152-92.
11. Tacconi, 'The Problem of Illegal Logging'.
12. Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down the obligations of operators who place timber and timber products on the market adopted on October 20, 2010 and published in the Official Journal on November 12, 2010 (entry into force on March 3, 2013).
13. Tim Boekhout van Solinge, 'Eco-Crime: The Tropical Timber Trade', in Organized Crime: Culture, Markets and Policies, ed. Dina Siegel and Hans Nelen (New York: Springer, 2008).
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15. TRACER, The Rough Guide to Traceable Certified Forest Products (Viborg: Special-Trykkeriet, 2011).
16. WWF, Illegal Wood for the European Market. An Analysis of the EU Import and Export of Illegal Wood and Related Products (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: World Wildlife Fund, 2008).
17. H.E Celik, 'Forests and Natural Disasters', in Integration of Information for Environmental Security, ed. H. G. Coskun, H.K. Cigizoglu, and M.D. Maktav, Nato Science for Peace and Security Series C - Environmental Security (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008).
18. Frank Miller, Rodney Taylor, and George White, Keep it Legal: Best Practices for Keeping Illegally Harvested Timber Out of Your Supply Chain (WWF International and Global Forest & Trade Network, 2006).
19. CIE, A Final Report to Inform a Regulation Impact Statement;
20. Duffy, 'Global Governance'.
21. Tacconi, 'The Problem of Illegal Logging
22. UNEP believes the international trade in illegal timber products was worth US$8.5 billion in 2008. UNEP, 'Forests'.
23. Jeremy Haken, Transnational Crime in the Developing World (Washington, DC: Global Financial Integrity, 2011).
24. Interpol and The World Bank, Chainsaw Project: An Interpol Perspective on Law Enforcement in Illegal Logging (2009).
25. Seneca Creek, 'Illegal' Logging and Global Wood Markets: The Competitive Impacts on the U.S. Wood Products Industry (Poolesville, MD: American Forest & Paper Association, 2004).
26. WWF, Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth, Tackling the EU's Role in Illegal Logging. NGO recommendations for the Proposed Regulation Concerning the Placing of Timber and Timber Products on the EU Market (2009).
27. Legal and sustainable forestry are not synonymous. Sustainable timber takes into account the ecological, economic and social development in the long turn, whereas legal merely means the timber comes from legal sources.
28. The distorted global pricing of timber due to illegal logging causes an estimated loss of about US$15 billion yearly for the legal timber industry in Canada, the United States, EU and New Zealand, whereas legal producers of timber products in high-risk countries are US$31 billion worse off. Highrisk countries are those where wood products have a high probability of coming from illegal sources (between 20% and 90% of timber in these countries comes from illegal sources) (e.g. China, Russia, Indonesia and Malaysia).
29. Rob White, Transnational Environmental Crime. Towards an Eco-Global Criminology (London: Routledge, 2011).
30. Mark Halsey, 'Against "Green" Criminology', British Journal of Criminology 44, no. 4 (2004).
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33. White, Transnational Environmental Crime.
34. Katja Franko Aas, 'Analysing a World in Motion - Global Flows Meet "Criminology of the Other" ', Theoretical Criminology 11, no. 2 (2007).
35. Lieselot Bisschop, 'Transnational Environmental Crime: Exploring (un)Charted Territory', in EU Criminal Justice, Financial & Economic Crime: New Perspectives, Governance of Security Research Papers, ed. M. Cools et al. (Antwerpen: Maklu, 2011).
36. Carole Gibbs et al., 'Introducing Conservation Criminology: Towards Interdisciplinary Scholarship on Environmental Crimes and Risks', British Journal of Criminology 50, no. 1 (2010).
37. James Sheptycki and Ali Wardak, eds., Transnational and Comparative Criminology (London: Glasshouse Press, 2005).
38. Earl Babbie, The Practice of Social Research, 11th ed. (Belmont, CA: Thomson Higher Education, 2007).
39. REM, Progress in Tackling Illegal Logging in Cameroon - IM-FLEG Cameroon (Cambridge: Resource Extraction Monitoring, 2009).
40. Tacconi, 'The Problem of Illegal Logging'.
41. For the EU, imports can breach CITES, EU VPA or Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT), UN Convention against Corruption, on organised crime, on organised transnational crime and so on.
42. For example, timber that is illegally logged in Honduras is then illegally exported to Nicaragua and later on legally imported as 'Nicaraguan' timber into Honduras. Adrian Wells et al., 'Rural Livelihoods, Forest Law and the Illegal Timber Trade in Honduras and Nicaragua', in Illegal Logging: Law Enforcement, Livelihoods and the Timber Trade, ed. Luca Tacconi (London: Earthscan, 2007).
43. Adopted from the definition provided in http://www.globaltimber.org.uk (accessed June 10, 2011).
44. The tropical forest regions of the world - South America, South East Asia and Africa - each have their particular social organisation and way of working. This research studied the illegal tropical timber trade between Africa and Europe, and Belgium in particular. This article makes no claims for generalisation of the findings towards the other regions and timber flows.
45. Yvon van der Pijl, Brenda Carina Oude Breuil, and Dina Siegel, 'Is there such a Thing as "Global Sex Trafficking"? A Patchwork Tale on Useful (mis)Understandings', Crime, Law and Social Change 56, no. 5 (2011).
46. Nikos Passas, 'Cross-Border Crime and the Interface between Legal and Illegal Actors', in Upperworld and Underworld in Cross-Border Crime, ed. Petrus van Duyne, Klauw von Lampe, and Nikos Passas (Nijmegen: Wolf Legal Publishers, 2002).
47. Andrew Szasz, 'Corporations, Organized Crime and the Disposal of Hazardous Waste: An Examination of the Making of a Criminogenic Regulatory Structure', Criminology 24, no. 1 (1986).
48. David Nelken, 'White Collar Crime', in The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, ed. M. Maguire, M. Morgan, and Robert Reiner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
49. Passas, 'Cross-Border Crime'.
50. Antonius Tijhuis, Transnational Crime and the Interface between Legal and Illegal Actors. The Case of the Illicit Art and Antiquities Trade (Leiden: NCSR, 2006).
51. Nelken, 'White Collar Crime'.
52. Passas, 'Cross-Border Crime';
53. Wim Huisman and Gudrun Vande Walle, 'The Criminology of Corruption', in The Good Cause. Theoretical Perspectives on Corruption, ed. Gjalt de Graaf, Patrick von Maravic, and Pieter Wagenaar (Leverkusen: Burdich Publishing, 2010).
54. Passas, 'Cross-Border Crime';
55. Nikos Passas, 'Cross-Border Crime and the Interface between Legal and Illegal Actors', Security Journal 16, no. 1 (2003).
56. Tijhuis, Transnational Crime.
57. Passas refers to eight symbiotic interfaces, and Tijhuis omits two of those from his typology.
58. Passas, 'Cross-Border Crime'.
59. Tijhuis, Transnational Crime.
60. Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
61. Robert Yin, Applications of Case-Study Research, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003).
62. Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 4th ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2009).
63. Interviews ranged from 45 minutes to 2 hours in length. The respondents were interviewed face to face, through a Skype video interview or over the phone, because the diverse locations of the respondents did not allow the interviewer to meet each of them in person.
64. These respondents were guaranteed anonymity and therefore I refer to government (G and number), corporate (C and number) and civil society respondents (S and number) for citations. This case study is part of a broader PhD research on transnational environmental crime, which also included another case (e-waste). There is one list of respondents for both cases and respondents were numbered consecutively.
65. It was difficult to get timber importers to participate in the research. Three refused and mentioned they only work legally and therefore see no use in participating in research on illegal timber. Two other timber importers and the sector organisation were willing to participate. It is difficult to know, however, to what extent these corporations represent the 'best kids in the class'.
66. Mark Leys, 'De Gevalstudie', in Kwalitatieve Methoden en Technieken in de Criminologie, ed. Tom Decorte and Damian Zaitch (Leuven: Acco, 2009), 56-65.
67. Yin, Case Study Research;
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69. Norman J. Vig and Michael G. Faure, eds., Green Giants? Environmental Policies of the United States and the European Union (Massachussetts Institute of Technology, 2004).
70. TEU refers to 'twenty-foot equivalent unit', a container 20 feet long, 8 feet high and 8 feet wide. This is the standard unit of measurement to count container traffic.
71. Antwerp was the second European port after Rotterdam until February 2012, when it was overtaken in terms of container volume by Hamburg.
72. Of all freight landed at Antwerp, 37% is loaded back onto sea vessels and 35% goes to neighbouring countries by inland shipping and rail, 12% is destined for companies located in the port and 16% is for distribution within Belgium.
73. Zsuzsa Gille, 'Detached Flows or Grounded Place-Making Projects?', in Governing Environmental Flows. Global Challenges to Social Theory, ed. Gert Spaargaren, Arthur Mol, and Frederik Buttel (London: MIT Press, 2006).
74. Gert Spaargaren, Arthur Mol, and Frederik Buttel, Governing Environmental Flows. Global Challenges to Social Theory (London: MIT Press, 2006).
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76. Hazel Croall, Understanding White Collar Crime (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001).
77. There are, for instance, major differences between the timber trade data published by Eurostat and the timber trade statistics of a number of the EU's major trading partners (European Forest Institute).
78. Given the different measuring units, RWE is often used as a standard unit to compare the timber trade of different countries.
79. Logs or other unfinished forest products will be reduced in volume once the production is finished and therefore the export of logs and finished products can differ in volume. J. Landro and Anthony Lo, Study on the International Transportation of Tropical Timber Products (Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea: International Tropical Timber Organization, 2007).
80. The CITES seizures for the 27 EU member states and a few neighbouring countries are monitored with the EU TWIX (Trade in Wildlife Information eXchange) database which was developed and piloted in Belgium. This system is meant to foster cooperation through depersonalised information exchange. When police, customs, inspectorates or administrations come across illegal international trade, they will contact or warn each other about new means of forging documents, of concealing CITES loads and so on.
81. Interpol and The World Bank, Chainsaw Project.
82. Hin Keong Chen, The Role of CITES in Combating Illegal Logging - Current and Potential (Cambridge: TRAFFIC International, 2006).
83. CIE, A Final Report to Inform a Regulation Impact Statement;
84. Sam Lawson and Larry MacFaul, Illegal Logging and Related Trade: Indicators of the Global Response (London: Chatham House, 2010).
85. Tacconi, 'The Problem of Illegal Logging'.
86. Seneca Creek, 'Illegal' Logging and Global Wood Markets.
87. Illegal logging estimates are very different depending on the regions under study: the scale of illegal logging is assessed to be 80% of total production for Brazil, 70-100% for Russia, 66% for Indonesia and many other high-risk countries are in the same range. Source: Paul Toyne, Cliona O'Brien, and Rob Nelson, The Timber Footprint of the G8 and China (Gland, Switzerland: WWF International, 2002).
88. WWF, Illegal Wood for the European Market;
89. Andreas Ottisch et al., Impacts of Reduction of Illegal Logging in European Russia on the EU and European Russia Forest Sector and Trade (Joensuu: European Forest Institute, 2005).
90. Interpol and The World Bank, Chainsaw Project.
91. Contreras-Hermosilla et al., The Economics of Illegal.
92. The total trade in the forest industry equals about 1% of the world's gross domestic product (GDP) and the suspicious volume of round wood entering international trade is about 1% of global forestry, which would mean that the value of illegal wood on the global trade market for 2009 is approximately US$7 billion: Contreras-Hermosilla et al., The Economics of Illegal.
93. Haken, Transnational Crime; Seneca Creek, 'Illegal' Logging and Global Wood Markets.
94. Haken, Transnational Crime explains that the 2004 Seneca Creek report spoke of $4.9 billion, but this is explained by the lower GDP at that date.
95. WWF, Illegal Wood for the European Market.
96. The 12 countries studied represent 20% of illegal timber production and 50% of illegal wood trade. For Cameroon it has fallen 54%, for Indonesia 75% and for Brazilian Amazon between 50% and 75%. The illegal share in logging is still estimated to be 35-72% for Brazilian Amazon, 22-35% for Cameroon, 59-65% in Ghana and 14-25% in Malaysia. Lawson and MacFaul, Illegal Logging.
97. The United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, the United States, and Japan.
98. China and Vietnam.
99. REM, Progress in Tackling.
100. Based on the European Forestry Institute Trade Statistics for EU 27: http://www.efi.int/portal/policy_advice/flegt/trade_statistics/ (accessed April 3, 2012). This relates to analyses of Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.
101. WWF, Illegal Wood for the European Market.
102. European Commission, Assessment of the Impact of Potential Further Measures to Prevent the Importation or Placing on the Market of Illegally Harvested Timber or Products Derived from Such Timber (Helsinki: European Commission - DG Environment, Indufor, European Forest Institute, Nepcon, Markku Kiikeri Ky, 2008).
103. WWF et al., Tackling the EU's Role.
104. This refers to commodity code 44. It is fourth after Germany, France and the Netherlands.
105. Note that timber declared in Belgium as from Cameroon might actually derive from the Central African Republic or the Republic of Congo.
106. CITES notifications reveal the four species mostly traded in Belgium are Afrormosia (Pericopsis elata) from Central and West Africa; Ramin (Gonystylus spp.) from Asia; Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) from Central and South America; and African cherry (Prunus africana) from Africa and Madagascar. CITES MA België, 'Handel in CITES-hout', in Vorming Handel in CITES Hout (Brussels: FOD Volksgezondheid, Veiligheid van de Voedselketen en Leefmilieu, 2010).
107. CITES Trade Database: http://www.unep-wcmc-apps.org/citestrade/ (accessed April 3, 2012).
108. The volume of these products is likely to be about half that of their RWE volume.
109. J. Bruinsma, The Resource Outlook to 2050. By How Much Do Land, Water Use and Crop Yields Need to Increase by 2050? Technical Paper from the Expert Meeting on How to Feed the World in 2050 (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2009).
110. Anne Casson and Krystof Obidzinski, 'From New Order to Regional Autonomy: Shifting Dynamics of Illegal Logging in Kalimantan, Indonesia', in Illegal Logging: Law Enforcement, Livelihoods and the Timber Trade, ed. Luca Tacconi (London: Earthscan, 2007).
111. FAO, State of the World's Forest 2009 (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2009)
112. Seneca Creek, 'Illegal' Logging and Global Wood Markets.
113. Luca Tacconi, ed. Illegal Logging: Law Enforcement, Livelihoods and the Timber Trade, The Earthscan Forestry Library (London: Earthscan, 2007).
114. Wells et al., 'Rural Livelihoods'.
115. REM, Progress in Tackling.
116. Lawson and MacFaul, Illegal Logging.
117. Landro and Lo, Study on the International Transportation.
118. Tacconi, 'The Problem of Illegal Logging'.
119. Note that the same can be said about many destination countries as well (see further).
120. Haken, Transnational Crime.
121. CIE, A Final Report to Inform a Regulation Impact Statement;
122. Duffy, 'Global Governance'.
123. Interpol and The World Bank, Chainsaw Project;
124. WWF, Illegal Wood for the European Market.
125. An example of this violence is the murder of Joao Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria do Espirito Santo, who were found murdered on a nature reserve near Maraba in Para State, Brazil.
126. Quentin Ducenne, Etude des flux Transfrontaliers de Bois Entre Les Pays de la COMIFAC Actuellement Impliqués dans le Processus FLEGT (COMIFAC & Union Européenne, 2008).
127. M. Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).
128. UNODC, Countering the World of Smuggling Through Container Control, UN Office on Drugs and Crime, http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2011/May/countering-the-world-of-smuggling-through-container-control.html (accessed October 3, 2011).
129. Hugh Griffiths and Michael Jenks, Maritime Transport and Destabilizing Commodity Flows SIPRI Policy Paper (Solna: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2012).
130. Domestic consumption is thought to have been about 202 million m3 in 2007 and is likely to increase to 460 million m3 in 2020. In 2009, China exported US$7.5 billion to the EU, US$5.1 billion to the EU and US$3 billion to Japan. See: Sun Xiufang and Kerstin Canby, 'Baseline Study 1 China: Overview of Forest Governance, Markets and Trade', in Forest Trends (Kuala Lumpur: European Forest Institute - FLEGT Asia Regional Office, 2011).
131. Clarifying illustrations of this trade, with explanations, are available at http://illegaltimber.uk.org (accessed April 3, 2012).
132. REM, Progress in Tackling.
133. Landro and Lo, Study on the International Transportation.
134. For more information about these long-term outcomes, see Miller et al., Keep it Legal.
135. In reference to the legal-illegal interfaces this indicates an antithetical relation, see below.
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