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.
To complement and expand on such efforts, the report makes the following key recommendations:
- Strengthen and consider funding opportunities for a fully fledged LEAF programme under INTERPOL and UNEP, in close collaboration with REDD+, the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) and all relevant partners.
- Increase national investigative and operational capacities through training on transnational environmental crime.
- Centralize all land-clearing permits to one national register, which will greatly facilitate transparency and investigation.
- Classify geographic regions based on suspected degree of illegality and restrict flows of timber and wood products from such areas including shipping.
- Encourage tax fraud investigations with a particular focus on plantations and mills.
- Reduce investment attractiveness in forests enterprises active in regions identified as areas of illegal logging by implementing an international INTERPOL-based rating system of companies extracting, operating in or buying from regions with a high degree of illegal activity.
Source: UNEP.
