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Illegal timber trade is a global issue; highly prized rosewoods are mainly sourced from Africa and Madagascar. In Madagascar, where corruption and political instability are rampant, forest regulations have been issued during the last 15 years to facilitate illegal rosewood exploitation. The current situation precludes non-detriment findings (under which the exporting State ensures that a proposed action will not be detrimental to the survival of a species) intended to enable sustainable use of standing populations, but the Malagasy government, backed by the World Bank, is promoting the sale of massive stocks of confiscated precious wood. We argue that allowing the sale of these stocks would encourage further illegal harvest. No suitable tools are available to identify, control or monitor standing trees or cut timber, and there are substantial knowledge gaps regarding species limits, population sizes, distribution and abundance. When combined with taxonomic confusion and weak governance, these factors necessitate uplifting all of Madagascar's precious woods to Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). ; ISSN:0006-3207 ; ISSN:1873-2917

This paper looks at the evidence on the magnitude and impacts of forest illegal acts, examines the vulnerabilities of the forest sector, and proposes a strategy for combating forest crime. Forest crime prominently includes illegal logging but acts against the law also affect other sector operations such as forest products transport, industrial processing, and trade. Almost universally, criminal exploitation of forest products and commerce prevail as large amounts are unlawfully harvested, traded against regulations in domestic markets or smuggled across borders, often with the willing participation of corrupt forest service officials and border police. Illegal activities do not stop at the forest. They travel down the line to operations related to transportation, national and international trade of forest products. A particular form of illegal forest activity, corruption, has come to the forefront of the international debate on forests and is now being openly discussed in various fora because of the increasing awareness of the immense costs associated with it. In this paper, corrupt deeds are illegal actions that:(i) engage public officials; (ii) involve public property and power; (iii) are perpetrated for private gain; (iv) are intentional acts; and (v) are surreptitious. Illegal activities are main threat to global resources. A wide variety of illegal acts, including, among others, illegal logging, illegal trade, arson and unauthorized occupation of forestlands, take place in all kinds of forests, in developing and industrialized economies. Often illegal activities are associated with corruption, involving the willing participation of government officers, usually in complicity with parties of the private sector, in schemes to abuse public property. Illegal acts generate a number of undesirable economic impacts, harm the environment and the most vulnerable sectors of society. To conclude, the improvement of the policy and legislative framework and the proper enforcement of the law may be the most important issue in the future management of forest resources worldwide.

AbstractThis paper analyzes the interactions between the separate components of the emerging transnational timber legality regime, both public and private. It examines how far, and through what institutional mechanisms, these interactions are producing a joined‐up transnational regime, based on a shared normative commitment to combat illegal logging and cooperative efforts to implement and enforce it. The paper argues that the experimentalist architecture of the EU FLEGT initiative has fostered productive, mutually reinforcing interactions both with public timber legality regulation in other consumer countries and with private certification schemes. But this emerging regime remains highly polyarchic, with broad scope for autonomous initiatives by NGOs and private service providers, along with national governments, international organizations, and multi‐donor partnerships. Hence horizontal integration and coordination within it depend on a series of institutional mechanisms, some of which are distinctively experimentalist, while others can also be found in more conventional regimes. These mechanisms include cross‐referencing and reciprocal endorsement of rules and standards; recursive learning through information pooling and peer review of implementation experience; public oversight and joint assessment of private certification and legality verification schemes; and the "penalty default" effect of public legality regulation in consumer countries, which have pushed both exporting countries and transnational firms to comply with the norms and procedures of the emerging transnational regime. The paper's findings thus provide robust new evidence for the claim advanced in previous work that a joined‐up transnational regime can be assembled piece by piece under polyarchic conditions through coordinated learning from decentralized experimentation, without a hegemonic power to impose common global rules.

International market requires producers to proof the legality of their wood products to address the issues of illegal logging and illegal trade. Timber Legality Verification System (TLVS) has been prepared by the Government of Indonesia that covering the upstream and downstream wood industries. This paper aims to evaluate gaps in the implementation of TLVS policy and its impact on the sustainability of timber industry. This study was using gap, descriptive and costs-structure analyzes. The study was conducted in three provinces, namely: DKI Jakarta, West Java and D.I. Yogyakarta. Research found that the effectiveness of the TLVS implementation was low due to relatively rapid policy changes. This situation became disincetive for investments in timber business. Private sector perceived that TLVS policy should be applied in the upstream of timber business. Hence, the industry and market in the downstream have not been fully support to this system. Furthermore, TLVS policy implementation was considered ineffective by timber industry as well as private forest managers, especially by micro industry and smallholder private forests. This situation threatened the sustainability of timber industry and private forests. Therefore, Institutions should be strengthened in order to improve the quality of human resources and the competitiveness of products. ; Isu illegal logging dan illegal trading di perdagangan kayu mengakibatkan pasar internasional menuntut bukti legalitas kayu dari produsen. Sistem Verifikasi Legalitas Kayu (SVLK) disiapkan pemerintah secara mengikat di industri kayu mulai dari hulu sampai hilir. Studi ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui gap implementasi kebijakan SVLK dan dampaknya terhadap keberlanjutan usaha industri kayu. Metode yang digunakan yaitu analisis gap, deskriptif dan struktur biaya. Penelitian dilakukan di tiga provisi: DKI Jakarta, Jawa Barat dan DI Yogyakarta. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa tingkat implementasi SVLK dipandang rendah karena perubahan kebijakan SVLK yang relatif cepat. Bagi ...

The vulnerable African timber species Nauclea diderrichii is threatened because of its overexploitation and illegal trade. We sampled individuals across Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville, Gabon and Democratic Republic of Congo and performed restriction associated DNA sequencing and low coverage MiSeq genome sequencing to discover SNP and INDEL loci. After MassARRAY genotyping of 95 individuals covering the sampled distribution range at 205 loci, a set of 88 loci were selected according to their differentiation among geographical regions. It is the first time that molecular markers are described for N. diderrichii and it should encourage genetic studies in this valuable species.

International audience ; Illegal timber trade is a global issue; highly prized rosewoods are mainly sourced from Africa and Madagascar. In Madagascar, where corruption and political instability are rampant, forest regulations have been issued during the last 15 years to facilitate illegal rosewood exploitation. The current situation precludes non-detriment findings (under which the exporting State ensures that a proposed action will not be detrimental to the survival of a species) intended to enable sustainable use of standing populations, but the Malagasy government, backed by the World Bank, is promoting the sale of massive stocks of confiscated precious wood. We argue that allowing the sale of these stocks would encourage further illegal harvest. No suitable tools are available to identify, control or monitor standing trees or cut timber, and there are substantial knowledge gaps regarding species limits, population sizes, distribution and abundance. When combined with taxonomic confusion and weak governance, these factors necessitate uplifting all of Madagascar's precious woods to Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

International audience ; Illegal timber trade is a global issue; highly prized rosewoods are mainly sourced from Africa and Madagascar. In Madagascar, where corruption and political instability are rampant, forest regulations have been issued during the last 15 years to facilitate illegal rosewood exploitation. The current situation precludes non-detriment findings (under which the exporting State ensures that a proposed action will not be detrimental to the survival of a species) intended to enable sustainable use of standing populations, but the Malagasy government, backed by the World Bank, is promoting the sale of massive stocks of confiscated precious wood. We argue that allowing the sale of these stocks would encourage further illegal harvest. No suitable tools are available to identify, control or monitor standing trees or cut timber, and there are substantial knowledge gaps regarding species limits, population sizes, distribution and abundance. When combined with taxonomic confusion and weak governance, these factors necessitate uplifting all of Madagascar's precious woods to Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

International audience ; Illegal timber trade is a global issue; highly prized rosewoods are mainly sourced from Africa and Madagascar. In Madagascar, where corruption and political instability are rampant, forest regulations have been issued during the last 15 years to facilitate illegal rosewood exploitation. The current situation precludes non-detriment findings (under which the exporting State ensures that a proposed action will not be detrimental to the survival of a species) intended to enable sustainable use of standing populations, but the Malagasy government, backed by the World Bank, is promoting the sale of massive stocks of confiscated precious wood. We argue that allowing the sale of these stocks would encourage further illegal harvest. No suitable tools are available to identify, control or monitor standing trees or cut timber, and there are substantial knowledge gaps regarding species limits, population sizes, distribution and abundance. When combined with taxonomic confusion and weak governance, these factors necessitate uplifting all of Madagascar's precious woods to Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

International audience ; Illegal timber trade is a global issue; highly prized rosewoods are mainly sourced from Africa and Madagascar. In Madagascar, where corruption and political instability are rampant, forest regulations have been issued during the last 15 years to facilitate illegal rosewood exploitation. The current situation precludes non-detriment findings (under which the exporting State ensures that a proposed action will not be detrimental to the survival of a species) intended to enable sustainable use of standing populations, but the Malagasy government, backed by the World Bank, is promoting the sale of massive stocks of confiscated precious wood. We argue that allowing the sale of these stocks would encourage further illegal harvest. No suitable tools are available to identify, control or monitor standing trees or cut timber, and there are substantial knowledge gaps regarding species limits, population sizes, distribution and abundance. When combined with taxonomic confusion and weak governance, these factors necessitate uplifting all of Madagascar's precious woods to Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

International audience ; Illegal timber trade is a global issue; highly prized rosewoods are mainly sourced from Africa and Madagascar. In Madagascar, where corruption and political instability are rampant, forest regulations have been issued during the last 15 years to facilitate illegal rosewood exploitation. The current situation precludes non-detriment findings (under which the exporting State ensures that a proposed action will not be detrimental to the survival of a species) intended to enable sustainable use of standing populations, but the Malagasy government, backed by the World Bank, is promoting the sale of massive stocks of confiscated precious wood. We argue that allowing the sale of these stocks would encourage further illegal harvest. No suitable tools are available to identify, control or monitor standing trees or cut timber, and there are substantial knowledge gaps regarding species limits, population sizes, distribution and abundance. When combined with taxonomic confusion and weak governance, these factors necessitate uplifting all of Madagascar's precious woods to Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

International audience ; Illegal timber trade is a global issue; highly prized rosewoods are mainly sourced from Africa and Madagascar. In Madagascar, where corruption and political instability are rampant, forest regulations have been issued during the last 15 years to facilitate illegal rosewood exploitation. The current situation precludes non-detriment findings (under which the exporting State ensures that a proposed action will not be detrimental to the survival of a species) intended to enable sustainable use of standing populations, but the Malagasy government, backed by the World Bank, is promoting the sale of massive stocks of confiscated precious wood. We argue that allowing the sale of these stocks would encourage further illegal harvest. No suitable tools are available to identify, control or monitor standing trees or cut timber, and there are substantial knowledge gaps regarding species limits, population sizes, distribution and abundance. When combined with taxonomic confusion and weak governance, these factors necessitate uplifting all of Madagascar's precious woods to Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Environmental crime around the world, such as trafficking in illegal timber, is directly related to political instability. Traffickers exploit weak, fragile, and chaotic political circumstances to illegally extract high-value commodities, challenging the extent to which conservation goals are achievable in resource rich developing countries. Rosewood is the largest traded endangered species in the world and in the West African country of Guinea-Bissau, political instability culminating in 2012, opened the doors for the rampant illegal exploitation of the valuable African rosewood tree, Pterocarpus Erinaceus. This thesis attempts to identify the spatial and temporal patterns of rosewood deforestation within Guinea-Bissau using a mixed methodology of expert interviews, and analysis of the Hansen Forest Loss /dataset. To identify rosewood extractions and distinguish them from background land use disturbance patterns, 16 metrics were calculated per contiguous deforestation patches between the years 2001 and 2018. Each patch was then ascribed a cluster based on its landscape properties using the Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) algorithm. Patch clusters were then assessed and compared against patterns and locations of rosewood extraction identified during field research conducted in April to May 2019. Interviews conducted with stakeholders indicated a rapid increase of small (<.5ha) and disperse patches cut down during the years 2012 to 2015, distinctly different from traditional land uses that are measured from 2001 to 2018. Initial results show that national parks are more effective at protecting against illicit rosewood extraction than other rural areas. This implies that the stability of governance, through foreign funding sources, in the national parks during a period of extreme political turmoil buffered against the impacts of the illicit rosewood trade. This thesis demonstrates how open-source satellite data can be employed to identify where illicit environmental activities have occurred over large geographic areas. The case of illicit rosewood harvest in Guinea-Bissau sheds light on the ways this species is being exploited in politically fragile countries. Identifying ecological impacts of the extraction illuminates the linkages between governance and the illicit trade of endangered species.

Global society has been putting efforts together to prevent forests from rampant deforestation and illegal logging worldwide since sustainability is a common goal for the Earth. At the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) called Rio+10, global efforts of timber importing countries and private sectors to restrain illegal logging were discussed in 2002. As a market instrument to eradicate illegal logging, timber legality systems in consumer countries have been implemented, starting with the United States since 2008, the European Union (EU) since 2013, Indonesia since 2016, Australia since 2017, Japan since 2018, and the Republic of Korea since 2019. In the implementation stage of the timber legality, the due diligence system plays a role in reducing the risk of illegally logged timber in a supply chain. This study investigated the due diligence system of Australian timber legality as a good practice and analyzed it according to the standard of risk management of International Standard Organization (ISO) consisting of 1) risk identification, 2) risk analysis, 3) risk assessment, 4) risk treatment, and 5) monitoring and review. As a result, the due diligence system of Australia was compatible with the risk management criteria of ISO. The timber legality in Australia was established based on relevant laws and regulations. Its system stepwise was composed of risk assessment and mitigation as well as risk identification and analysis of illegal logging possibility in accordance with origins and species. Eventually, this study clarified the structure of due diligence systems and evaluated the crucial points of these systems based on standards of ISO risk management. Results of this study will contribute to our understanding of timber legality towards sustainable development.

The Peruvian Amazon is an important arena in global efforts to promote sustainable logging in the tropics. Despite recent efforts to achieve sustainability, such as provisions in the US–Peru Trade Promotion Agreement, illegal logging continues to plague the region. We present evidence that Peru's legal logging concession system is enabling the widespread illegal logging via the regulatory documents designed to ensure sustainable logging. Analyzing official government data, we found that 68.3% of all concessions supervised by authorities were suspected of major violations. Of the 609 total concessions, nearly 30% have been cancelled for violations and we expect this percentage to increase as investigations continue. Moreover, the nature of the violations indicate that the permits associated with legal concessions are used to harvest trees in unauthorized areas, thus threatening all forested areas. Many of the violations pertain to the illegal extraction of CITES-listed timber species outside authorized areas. These findings highlight the need for additional reforms.