The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and INTERPOL said in a report released on Thursday at the World Forest conference in Rome that up to 90 per cent of logging in key tropical countries of the Amazon basin, Central Africa and South East Asia is being carried out by organized crime compromising efforts to combat climate change, deforestation, conserve wildlife and eradicate poverty.
The report entitled “Green Carbon: Black Trade” says that the illegal trade, worth between US$30-100 billion annually, hampers the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) initiative-one of the principal tools for catalyzing positive environmental change, sustainable development, job creation and reducing emissions.
With the increase in organized criminal activity, INTERPOL has also noted associated crimes such as murder, violence and atrocities against indigenous forest dwellers.
According to the report, criminal groups are combining old-fashioned tactics such as bribes with high-tech methods such as hacking government websites. Illegal operations are also becoming more sophisticated as loggers and dealers shift activities between regions and countries to avoid local and international policing efforts.
Estimates in the report that show the scale of the problem is much wider than previously thought come from improved knowledge of methods employed to launder illegal timber.
The report describes 30 ingenious ways of procuring and laundering illegal timber. One new way to launder millions of cubic metres of wood is to mix it with legally cut timber and process it and launder it through saw, paper, pulp and board mills. Another big scam involves selling timber and wood originating from wild forests as plantation timber - often with government subsidies for plantations.
A much-heralded apparent decline in illegal logging in the 2000s was in fact a shift from obvious activity to more advanced laundering operations by organized criminals, the report adds. In many cases, a five-fold increase in timber sold as “plantation wood” occurred in the years following law enforcement crack-downs.
In several instances, illegal timber transported through border crossings and harbours accounted for up to 30 times the official volumes. However, this laundering and smuggling of timber will enable law enforcement to act more firmly, as tax fraud is more strictly enforced than environmental laws that are often weak.
Much of the laundering is made possible by large flows of investment funds based in the EU, US and Asia into companies involved in the crime, including in establishing plantation operations with the sole purpose of laundering illegally cut timber.
In many cases, corrupt officials, local military and police emerge with revenues up to ten times that available through available legal pursuits. This seriously undermines much needed investments in sustainable forest operations and alternative livelihood incentives.
INTERPOL and UNEP, through its GRID Arendal centre in Norway, have established a pilot-project called LEAF (Law Enforcement Assistance to Forests) funded by the Norwegian Government agency NORAD to develop an international system to combat organized crime in close collaboration with key partners.
