About Illegal Logging

Illegal Logging- Impacts

The global trade in illegal timber is a multi-billion dollar business. By some estimates, illegal logging accounts for 8-10% of global production and trade, with illegal logging making up 60-70% of all logging in some of the most valuable and threatened forests in countries such as Indonesia. The World Bank estimates that illegal logging is causing US$ 15 billion of lost revenue annually.

Illegal logging is the harvesting, transporting, processing, buying or selling of timber in violation of national laws. Examples include harvesting wood from protected areas, exporting CITES red-listed species, and falsifying official documents. Illegal logging may include less obvious acts such as breaking license agreements, tax evasion, corrupting government officials and interferring with access and rights to forest areas.

Illegal logging has a long list of adverse consequences:

• loss of revenues to governments in the amount of 5-10 billion USD per year,
• loss of significant revenues to local communities,
• promotion of corruption and deterioration of the rule of law,
• loss of critical habitat for endangered species and of other environmental services, such as erosion control and water purification,
• loss of livelihoods for forests people,
• the revenue supports violent conflict between countries or rival groups or parties, as well as tyrannical and corrupt regimes
• unfair competition for legal loggers
  

Illegal Logging - Solutions

Verifying Legality
Some organisations provide legality verification services within uncertified forestry operations and supply chains. At the forest end of the supply chain these include log-tracking and auditing systems that focus on activity within the forest management unit and the transport of logs to the point of delivery to the mill. Other services target the end of the supply chain by assisting traders and end-users to assess the risk that a given product contains illegally sourced wood and to manage that risk.

The Keep It Legal manual is WWF's guide to help buyers of timber and timber products to avoid purchasing wood and wood products made from illegally logged timber.

Forest and Chain of Custody certification
Forest certification can provide an assurance that forestry operations are in compliance with relevant laws. Together with a Chain of Custody certification, a forestry operation and timber buyers can track all of their logs to certified forests, and check all points in the supply chains to ensure against unreported intermingling of the certified wood with uncertified or illegally sourced wood. Learn more about certification.

Initiatives to Combat Illegal Logging

• Forest Law Enforcement and Governance (FLEG) - regional initiatives initiated through a partnership of World Bank's Forest Governance Program and the G-8 Forest Program in 2004 motivating governments to collaborate on forest law enforcement and governance and address violation of forest law.
• The G8 - a forum of eight industrialized countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, US and Russia) which discuss major international issues. But the G8 Forestry Action Programme, agreed by the G8 foreign ministers in 1998, featured illegal logging as one of its five areas of action.  See also the G8 Illegal Logging Dialogue.
• The Forest Dialogue (TFD) on Illegal Logging - TFD is a group of individuals from diverse interests and regions that are committed to the conservation and sustainable use of forests.