By Environment Investigation Agency (EIA)

Our new report BAN-BOOZLED: How Corruption and Collusion Fuel Illegal Rosewood Trade in Ghana reveals how despite a comprehensive ban in place since March 2019, the dry forests and rural communities of Ghana are still the victims of rosewood plundering. EIA estimates that since 2012, over 540,000 tons of rosewood – the equivalent of 23,478 twenty-foot containers or approximately 6 million trees – were illegally harvested and imported into China from Ghana while bans on harvest and trade have been in place. EIA’s investigation documents a massive institutionalized timber trafficking scheme, enabled by high-level corruption and collusion.

New York: London: Environmental Investigation Agency, Inc. 2019. 16p.

By Environmental Investigation Agency, Inc. (EIA).

The illegal trade in precious “rosewoods” is the world’s most valuable form of wildlife crime. Hundreds of people have been killed around the world trying to protect these rare trees from the gangs seeking to profit from the rapidly growing demand for luxury furniture in China. Having decimated most rosewood species in Southeastern Asia and Central America, this rapacious industry has now turned to Africa, and a dry forest species called “kosso” (Pterocarpus erinaceus) . EIA’s investigators have spent two years exploring this booming illegal trade, including undercover meetings with more than 30 actors in the supply chain, from the arid forests in Nigeria to the sophisticated retail shops in China. Our investigation reveals that almost all the kosso coming from and through Nigeria for the past three years has been illegal. Most shockingly, EIA’s investigation has revealed that thousands of documents from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) have been used in contravention of the core objectives of the Convention.

London: Environmental Investigation Agency, Inc. 2017. 40p.

By Cynthia Ratsimbazafy, David J. Newton and Stéphane Ringuet

Madagascar is home to hundreds of endemic rosewood Dalbergia and ebony Diospyros timber species, many of which are in high demand, particularly in Asia, because of their attractive appearance and highly durable properties for carving into furniture and other household items. At least 350,000 trees were illegally felled inside protected areas and at least 150,000 tonnes of logs illegally exported to destinations including China, Malaysia and Mauritius over the five-year period, according to the study: Timber Island: The Rosewood and Ebony Trade of Madagascar. The lack of regulation was compounded by additional factors including widespread poverty, corruption, poor species identification skills at point of harvest and deficient knowledge about timber resources and led to rampant, unregulated felling of precious timber species.

Cambridge, UK: TRAFFIC, 2016. 144p.

By David Kamweti, Deborah Osiro and Donald A. Mwiturubani

An environmental crime can be defined as a grave act against the environment that results in the infringement of the right of citizens to a clean and healthy environment. For such an act to constitute a crime, it must contravene laid-down legislation in the various sectors of the environment, such as forestry, water and wildlife. Environmental offences have, for a long time, been treated as misdemeanours, and not felonies. Environmental crime is a serious and growing concern, leading to the near extinction of valuable wildlife species, and significantly impacting on the biological integrity of the planet. It contributes to environmental degradation, which in turn affects the quality and quantity of environmental resources. By doing so, it leads to unhealthy competition for these scarce resources, and subsequently to volatile situations and even resource-use conflicts. As such, environmental crime impacts on human livelihoods.

Pretoria, South Africa: Institute for Security Studies, 2009. 96p.

By Tian Yanfang

Since the end of the 1990s, the Sino-Russian border regions have witnessed a dramatic, unprecedented increase in cross-border timber trade that has made Russia the largest log supplier for China's expanding wood industry sector. Driving factors include: severe constraints in China's domestic wood supplies, the availability of rich forest resources in the Russian Far East and Siberia, liberalised trade policies and demand from both domestic and European, Japanese and US markets for low cost Chinese wood products. This study provides a contextual description and analysis of the cross-border timber trade boom and the actors involved. It examines the current challenges faced by a largely inefficient Russian forestry sector and decentralised Russian forest administration in the context of illegal logging and unsustainable forestry practices, both widely viewed as having reached serious dimensions.

This study focuses on the involvement and role of Chinese actors throughout the supply chain. Chinese companies have entered the Russian forestry sector, introduced greater efficiency and proved competitive. This involvement has also opened doors for Chinese actors to inadvertently or intentionally participate in illegal activities throughout the supply chain. In addition to timber harvesting, Chinese actors are involved as intermediaries in the commercial log depots and control the wholesale timber market in some parts of Russia. Chinese actors have also increasingly invested in wood processing in Russia, partly in response to the adjustment of the Russian export tax on logs. Most recently, there has been a trend towards vertical integration for Chinese companies, with intermediaries and wood importers attempting to extend their business to every node of the trading network. On the Chinese side of the border, preferential tax policies and infrastructure investment have spurred a rapid development of the timber processing industry with private sector processing mills replacing state-owned timber processing factories.

Hayama, Japan, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, 2008. 58p.

By Anatoly Lebedev

The preservation and sustainable use of Siberian and Russian Far East (RFE) forests is of global importance for a number of reasons. Yet, these forests, which are the traditional environments of many endangered species and indigenous tribes, are now supplying timber to nearby regions and countries that have largely destroyed their own forests. The vast forests of Asian Russia act as reservoirs for oneseventh of the global carbon pool. Russia holds 75 percent of the carbon stored by all of the world’s boreal forests, such that deforestation, after fossil fuel combustion, is the second largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in Russia, as it is worldwide. Properly conserved, Russian forests act as a critical green “lung” for the Earth, second to Brazil’s Amazon. The atmospheric carbon sink process, however, occurs much more slowly in taiga than in the tropical rainforest, as does the process of carbon exportation from organic changes. As a result, this source of carbon storage, after broad-scale commercial logging or forest fires, will also be more slowly restored to its initial function than would be tropical forests.. All across Russia, the past five years have witnessed a revival in domestic timber production, following the collapse of the 1990s, and a drive to achieve the level of volumes extracted during the Soviet period. In the RFE's Primorye Krai (Province), for example, roundwood production rose from 2.2 million cubic meters in 1998 to 3.3 million cubic meters in 2002 and to 3.7 million cubic meters in 2003, and seems to be increasing further under the pressure of growing Chinese and domestic demand. The same trend is exhibited in Khabarovski Krai. Its roundwood production grew from 5 million cubic meters in 1999 to approximately 6.5 million cubic meters in 2002. Iin both Krais there is a clear trend to harvest in formerly reserved, inaccessible, or roadless areas. Not only is the industry, then, launching a sort of "last attack" on formerly used, exhausted, and burnt forests, it is also aggressively pursuing the intact ones, which are already suffering from illegal operations. Expansion of logging and processing capacity over the last 3 to 4 years has not demonstrated a new and improved strategy, but, rather, has resulted in the poor condition found in the remaining commercially available forests and in the constant reduction of timber quality and price.

Washington, DC: Forest Trends, 2005. 48p.

By D.Y. Smirnov, (ed.), A.G. Kabanets, E.A. Lepeshkin, and D.V. Sychikov

Illegal logging of valuable temperate hardwoods has reached crisis proportions in the Russian Far East. Comparative analysis conducted by WWF Russia shows that from the period 2004-2011 the volume of Mongolian oak (the most valuable hardwood species) logged for export to China exceeded authorized logging volumes by 2-4 times. Much of this illegal logging takes place in the habitats of the Amur tiger and leads to their degradation. The materials included in this report are pertinent in the context of new legislation in the European Union, United States and other countries aimed at the exclusion of illegally sourced wood products, given that a signifi cant proportion of the illegal timber logged in the Russian Far East enters such markets in the form of Chinese-manufactured furniture and flooring. This report is applicable for use by public forest agencies, forest industry, NGOs, students and academics and all those who are not indifferent to the fate of Russian forests.

Moscow: World Wildlife Fund Russia, 2013. 43p.

By Charles Palmer

This paper considers the scale and underlying causes of recent high rates of deforestation in Indonesia. Its extent during 1997-98 is analysed using a materials balance model, the results of which demonstrate the seriousness of the problem at a time when the Indonesian economy was suffering the effects of the Asian financial crisis. The behaviour of the principal agents, illegal loggers, is discussed in the context of market and government failures and rent-seeking or corruption. A culture of corruption originated at the top of government during the tenure of ex- President Suharto, leading to market and government failures in the forestry sector, thus resulting in the creation of high levels of rent. A culture of corruption ensures that policy failures cannot be reversed and may lead to further intervention to benefit the status quo. Rent-seeking behaviour then spread to all levels of government, via a lack of good example at the top, leading to the creation of illegal logging networks. Since rent from illegal logging is higher than that for legal logging, there is an incentive for agents to ignore costs associated with sustainable forest management. Illegal logging, and hence inefficient resource use, is further encouraged by institutional failures such as weak enforcement and monitoring capacity, as well as policy failures at the international level too. Consequently, Indonesia’s forests have been intensively deforested for perhaps as long as 30 years, with little or no attention given to sustainable forest management.

London: Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment, 2001. 33p.

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By David Cowdrey

Illegal wildlife trade routes are difficult to uncover. By their very nature they are covert, sometimes run by organised criminals, and often used to smuggle other commodities such as drugs and guns. This report attempts to uncover some of these complex trade routes into Europe and the UK, as well as the techniques used to smuggle wildlife. It is based on research commissioned by WWF and TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, and independently conducted by the University of Wolverhampton which uses evidence from HM Customs and Excise, the Police and a number of court cases.

Cambridge, UK: TRAFFIC International, 2002. 15p.

By Debbie Banks and Julian Newman

This report is a call to action to stop the international illegal trade in tiger and other endangered Asian big cat skins. It draws together information from India, Nepal and China, as source, transit and destination countries. It also highlights the urgent need for governments to improve wildlife crime investigation, analysis, enforcement, communication and cooperation. Parties to the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) need to demonstrate greater political commitment and treat wildlife crime more seriously. Key range, transit and destination countries need to establish specialised enforcement units capable of combating the organised criminal networks controlling the trade. Professional enforcement agencies need to be involved in ensuring greater cross-border communication and coordination and the international community, both government and non-government, needs to provide adequate technical and financial assistance in mobilising new enforcement initiatives. There can be no doubt that the skin trade is spiralling out of control. On a remote road in the west of the Tibet Autonomous Region (hereafter referred to as Tibet), in October 2003, customs officers at a temporary checkpoint made a startling discovery that lifted the lid on the true scale of the illegal trade in tiger and leopard skins. In a single consignment officers recovered the skins of 31 tigers, 581 leopards and 778 otters. The skins came from India and were on route to Lhasa, capital of Tibet, a major hub for the trade.

London; New York: Environmental Investigation Agency, 2004. 24p.

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Edited by Kristiina Kangaspunta; Ineke Haen Marshall

The careless or illegal exploitation of the natural environment is by no means a recent development. Long before former US Vice President Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth made the dangers of the nonchalant and predatory use of our planet’s resources painfully real to large audiences, toxic waste was dumped in rivers and oceans, there was clear felling of forests and timber smuggling, and threatened or protected species (both animals and plants) were transported and traded for profit. Some of this took place locally, some of this crossed national borders. Some of this was perfectly legal, and some of this had been declared illegal either by local, national or international statutes. Sometimes the harm done was obvious to even the most casual observer, but very often it was not. Sometimes it was the work of one individual or a small group, but frequently networks or organized crime groups were involved. Occasionally, an individual, community group or NGO voiced their complaint, but more often than not there was a deafening silence. Now the silence has been broken – for reasons we can only speculate about, but which clearly include the ‘greening’ of politics, the emergence of local and global grassroots environmental justice movements, and the growing concern of large corporations with the damaging public relation effects of being viewed as ‘eco-hostile’. A tipping point has been reached where enough voices speak out loud and urgently to place environmental harm as a high priority item on the policy agenda. The publication before you aims to add a strong voice to the debate. The authors hope to contribute to the articulation of a global research agenda on environmental crime; a research agenda based on commitment to the following three principles: (1) Recognition of the value of evidence–based policy-making (over policies based on expediency, political pressures, or purely economic considerations); (2) Willingness to appreciate the importance of theoretical insights drawn from different disciplines to guide policy, and (3) Concern with balancing human and ecological rights. This Introduction provides the context for this effort.

Turin : UNICRI, cop. 2009. 129p.

By Amanda Gore

Boniface Mathew Malyongo was, by most accounts, the perfect fit for a Hollywood villain. Nicknamed ‘Shetani’ (Satan, or the devil, in Kiswahili), he was allegedly one of the most prolific elephant poachers and ivory traffickers in the world, accused by some of controlling as many as 15 poaching gangs responsible for killing up to 10 000 elephants in five countries. The Leonardo DiCaprio-produced documentary, The Ivory Game, which culminated with dramatic footage of Malyongo’s arrest in Tanzania, assured him a certain degree of global infamy. And when he was jailed for 12 years in 2018, conservation organizations and activists around the world rejoiced. But Malyongo appealed, and in 2020 Tanzania’s Court of Appeal quashed the conviction. For conservationists, it was a stunning reversal – the court ruled that there were basic errors and police missteps that fatally compromised the chain of evidence, a complete lack of evidence to prove the key elements of the crimes and an overreliance on confessions as proof of guilt. Despite charging Malyongo with ‘leading organized crime’, as defined in Tanzania’s Economic and Organized Crime Control Act, investigators and prosecutors produced no hard evidence that he organized, directed or financed a ‘criminal racket’, or reaped a profit from it. The case and the vast sums involved could have been a chance to unravel the financial threads underpinning an alleged transnational syndicate, yet no financial investigation was ever done. Police seized four vehicles and identified several properties, including a house and a supermarket, which, they said, had been obtained as a result of poaching activities. But that is where the financial inquiries stopped. No attempt was made to produce evidence showing how the syndicate financed its operations, where the money originated, how it flowed or how it was laundered. While the effect of the judgment is that Malyongo has been found innocent, the conduct of the public officials in this case, the police and prosecutors, is a matter that deserves scrutiny

Geneva, CH: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2021. 44p.

By United Nations Environment Programme; CITES, IUCN, TRAFFIC

This rapid response assessment report brings together critical up-to-date information from the CITES-recognized systems that monitor the status of elephants, the illegal killing of elephants, and the legal and illegal trade in ivory. Collectively, these systems deliver consistent, evidence-based information to improve our understanding of the dynamics of the illegal ivory supply chain

Nairobi, Kenya: United Nations Environment Programme, Arendal, NO: GRID-Arendal, 2013. 80p.

By U.S. Government Accountability Office

Illegal trade in wildlife—wildlife trafficking—continues to push some protected and endangered animal species to the brink of extinction, according to the Department of State. Wildlife trafficking undermines conservation efforts, can fuel corruption, and destabilizes local communities that depend on wildlife for biodiversity and ecotourism revenues. This trade is estimated to be worth $7 billion to $23 billion annually. In 2013, President Obama issued an executive order that established the interagency Task Force charged with developing a strategy to guide U.S. efforts on this issue. GAO was asked to review U.S. government efforts to combat wildlife trafficking. This report focuses on wildlife trafficking in Africa, particularly of large animals, and examines, among other things, (1) what is known about the security implications of wildlife trafficking and its consequences, (2) actions Task Force agencies are taking to combat wildlife trafficking, and (3) the extent to which the Task Force assesses its progress. GAO analyzed agency documents and met with U.S. and host country officials in Washington, D.C.; Kenya; South Africa; and Tanzania. What GAO Recommends GAO recommends that the Secretaries of State and the Interior and the Attorney General of the United States, as co-chairs, jointly work with the Task Force to develop performance targets related to the National Strategy for Combating Wildlife Trafficking Implementation Plan. Agencies agreed with GAO’s recommendation.

Washington, GAO, 2016. 58p.

By Seneca Creek Associates, LLC and Wood Resources International, LLC

Illegal logging has been high on the agenda, if not directly at the center, of numerous international conferences on forests. This attention stems in large part from environmental concern over deforestation and poor forest management practices in many developing countries and countries with economies in transition. Illegal harvesting can have deleterious impacts on biodiversity and other globally important environmental services. Among the factors driving illegal logging are: unclear or poorly enforced forest tenure, weak political institutions, poverty, corruption, inadequate natural resources planning and monitoring, and lax enforcement of sovereign laws and regulations. The presence of illegally procured wood fiber also affects the competitiveness of American and other producers who operate legitimately within national and international environmental and trade rules. An AF&PA-sponsored study of the illegal logging issue provides new perspective on the estimates of illegal logging and its associated economic impacts.

Poolesville, MD: Seneca Creek Associates; University Place, WA : Wood Resources International, 2004. 190p.

By Liana Sun Wyler and Pervaze A. Sheikh

Global trade in illegal wildlife is a growing illicit economy, estimated to be worth at least 5 billion and potentially in excess of 20 billion annually. Some of the most lucrative illicit wildlife commodities include tiger parts, caviar, elephant ivory, rhino horn, and exotic birds and reptiles. Demand for illegally obtained wildlife is ubiquitous, and some suspect that illicit demand is growing. International wildlife smuggling may be of interest to Congress as it presents several potential environmental and national security threats to the United States. Threats to the environment include the potential loss of biodiversity, introduction of invasive species into U.S. ecosystems, and transmission of disease through illegal wildlife trade. National security threats include links between wildlife trafficking and organized crime and drug trafficking. The role of Congress in evaluating U.S. policy to combat wildlife trafficking is broad. Potential issues for Congress include 1 determining funding levels for U.S. wildlife trade inspection and investigation 2 evaluating the effectiveness of U.S. foreign aid to combat wildlife trafficking 3 developing ways to encourage private sector involvement in regulating the wildlife trade 4 using trade sanctions to penalize foreign countries with weak enforcement of wildlife laws 5 incorporating wildlife trade provisions into free trade agreements and 6 addressing the domestic and international demand for illegal wildlife through public awareness campaigns and non-governmental organization partnerships. This report focuses on the international trade in terrestrial fauna, largely excluding trade in illegal plants, including timber, and fish.

Washington, DC: U.S. Congressional Research Service,The Library of Congress, 2008. 52p.

By Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Kaoem Telapak (KT)

Indonesia’s legal system is failing to act against timber criminals, seriously undermining the country’s top-level efforts to tackle illegal logging and deforestation. New research by EIA and our Indonesian partner Kaoem Telapak reveals that action through the courts was taken against only a handful of companies out of more than 50 proven to have either traded directly or indirectly in illegal timber.

London; Washington, DC: EIA, Bogor, Indonesia: Kaoem Telapak. 2021. 30p.

By Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).

An undercover investigation by the Environmental Investigation Agency has exposed how an entire industry of Italian companies has continued to profit from the sale of valuable timber from Myanmar, even while many other countries have cracked down on the trade and European authorities agree that importing Myanmar timber is a violation of the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR). This trade has been allowed to continue since the military coup in Myanmar of February 2021. When asked, no trader confirmed they would stop importing despite the recent introduction of EU sanctions on the Myanmar Timber Enterprise, the state-owned company that claimed to be the only legal source of timber in the country. The investigation raises serious questions about how Italian and European authorities have allowed the trade to continue, and what action they will take to stop it. Only minimal fines have been imposed on the companies, who have continued to trade despite findings they are breaching the law, and the trade has only continued to increase despite heightened scrutiny on the legal problems with Myanmar timber.

London; Washington, DC: EIA, 2021. 34p.

By United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

The present version of the Wildlife and Forest Crime Analytic Toolkit is an initial attempt to provide a comprehensive overview for understanding the main issues related to environmental offences and for analysing preventive and criminal justice responses to wildlife and forest offences in a given country. Efforts have been made to provide a framework through which measures for prevention and response can be analysed and understood as the basis for an effective national response to wildlife and forest offences. The Toolkit is designed mainly to assist government officials in wildlife and forestry administration, Customs and other relevant enforcement agencies. It will help them to conduct a comprehensive analysis of possible means and measures to protect wildlife and forests and monitor their use and thus, to identify technical assistance needs. In this sense, the Toolkit may also be used as training material for law enforcers. In addition, other stakeholders at the international and national levels, as well as civil society, may find the Toolkit useful regarding their daily responsibilities. The Toolkit can be used effectively to address (a) a wide range of wildlife and forest offences, including illegal logging and illegal trade in timber and a lack of adherence to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and, (b) the usefulness of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the United Nations Convention against Corruption.

New York: United Nations, 2012. 212p,

By Yunbo Jiao

The central goal of this study is to produce an in-depth understanding of the nature and dynamics of China-related transnational environmental crime (TEC). To that end, this study takes the GreaterKaoem Telapak Kaoem Telapak China – including mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan – as the specific geographic focus for its investigation into three key TEC sectors (illegal trade in wildlife, forest products, and ozone depleting substances (ODS)). Overall, this study seeks to achieve the central goal in a four-step sequence. First, it builds a network-centric conceptual framework based on the idea of “networked threats require networked responses” advocated by many influential scholars. This framework focuses on addressing two puzzles: what essentially constitutes a network threat; and what forms a networked response. Second, it applies the concept of networked threats to the study of China’s global trade in illegal wildlife, forest products, and ODS. Third, it examines China’s TEC-related legal frameworks and enforcement responses and identifies key challenges that China has encountered in each of the three selected TEC sectors. Fourth and finally, it combines the above three lines of understandings – the accounts of networked responses, the empirical findings of China’s illegal trade, and the key regulatory and enforcement challenges identified – to develop practical suggestions on how can China apply the notion of networked responses to the formulation of regulatory and enforcement strategies for addressing the identified key challenges. This study makes two broad arguments: one theoretically oriented and one empirically directed. First, this study argues that while the concept of networked threats can be approached along the dimensions of transaction networks and directed networks, networked responses are not a standard, formatted mode of regulatory or enforcement responses. Instead, networked responses should be understood as a special way of thinking and acting: a way that sees a bright-side actor (e.g., enforcement agencies) as operating in an environment occupied by various networks and entities, which simultaneously present challenges in terms of amplified (networked) threats, as well as opportunities in terms of power amplifiers for the bright-side actor, in the sense that they could potentially be leveraged for tackling these threats. Second, China’s global trade in environmental contraband is typified by the substantial scale of China’s black markets and the deep embeddedness of China in the international and regional illicit trade chains. These two features, on the one hand, pose a serious challenge to the Chinese government in tackling its TEC; while on the other hand, they imply that Chinese effort and progress made toward addressing its illegal internal trade will likely have a substantive, positive overflowing effect on the whole of the international and regional illegal trade.

Canberra: Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, 2016. 306p.