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. (more…)
