Illegal logging and trading in illegally sourced wood products is globally one of the major causes of deforestation and forest degradation in many developing countries. It not only robs cash-strapped developing country governments of much needed revenues, it also destroys the livelihood of worldwide several hundreds of million of people who depend on forests. The destruction of forests — illegal or government-sanctioned — is also a significant contributor to global carbon dioxide emissions, according to some estimates close to 20 percent. So, it must be considered good news that a new study by the British Chatham House finds by looking at twelve major producer, processing and consumer countries that illegal logging globally has fallen by 22 percent over the course of the last decade, or more specifically by about 50 to 75 percent in the Brazilian Amazon, by 75 percent in Indonesia, and still by half in Cameroon.
As a result up to 17 million hectares of forest are estimated to have been protected from degradation in the five tropical timber producers studied. This adds up to at least 1.2 billion tons and possibly many more of avoided carbon dioxide emissions since 2002. In comparison: in 2009, Germany, globally the sixth biggest CO2 polluter, blasted 760 million tons into the atmosphere.
That does not mean that illegal logging in the five producer countries studied (Cameroon, Ghana, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil) does not remain a significant problem: the tropical rainforest is not yet out of the woods, so to speak. Regulations and policies in producer countries are weak and forest law enforcement is still lacking, even though governments’ responses are improving. One reason is that illegal loggers can still count on the insatiable demand of buyers in the industrialized world, who want nice looking wood stuff, but cheap. The study looked at five consumer countries, namely the US, Japan, the UK, France and the Netherlands. Together they bought 17 million cubic meters of illegal timber and wood products worth around US$8.4 billion, arriving in these countries mostly as plywood or tropical wood furniture, mainly from China. With annual imports of 20 million cubic meters of illegal wood, China as processor country is the world’s top importer and exporter of illegal logs . As illegally sourced wood products reach the consumer mainly via processing countries, it becomes even more important that consumer countries enact well crafted tropical timber import legislation. Interestingly, the US are in this respect the trendsetters with the so called US Lacey Act. The EU is likewise now considering legislation prohibiting the import of illegally harvested, which the European Parliament just recently approved.
Obviously, illegal logging comes at a price: the Chatham House study estimates that the five countries analysed could have generated US$ 6.5 billion if the timber had been harvested legally, twice as much as global ODA spends on elementary school education in developing countries, by the way…. While this is revenue that few developing and emerging countries can afford to forego, from a global climate perspective it pays to avoid massive logging of tropical forests — illegal or legitimate — altogether. This, of course, is the reasoning behind REDD (“Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation“), the incentive scheme paying countries for protecting tropical forest that is an important part of global climate finance discussions in ongoing UNFCCC negotiations. The approach has its own problems, and with it tons of criticisms, concerns and and worried observers. But this is the stuff of another lengthy blog entry, no doubt.
Just back to a purely monetary evaluation: were one to look at the roughly US$ 18 per ton CO2 (as of July 15) that the European Union Emissions Trading System currently pays as the yardstick, the five analysed countries Brazil, Ghana, Malaysia, Indonesia and Cameroon could have netted a total of US$ 21.6 billion for the at minimum 1.2 billion tons of CO2 emissions avoided by reducing illegal logging since 2002. Compare this to the roughly US$ 4 billion that the Global Forest Partnership, established in Oslo in May of this year, has promised to raise in “fast start finance” for REDD from now until 2012. Or the estimated US$ 500 million that were deposited by industrialized countries in various REDD financing instruments and funds by the end of last year. Indeed, at least in terms of “(avoided) bang for the buck“, tropical rainforests are not yet out of the woods….
Photo: chekabuje with Creative Commons License
Tags: Climate change, climate finance, CO2 emissions, Forests, REDD
The real culprit are the legal loggers. They cut everything in thousands of logs everyday. Illegal loggers could hardly make one tree in one day for a living. Lets all come to think of it who deforest and forest degradatator.