Impact of illegal logging

A REPORT into the effect that illegal logging has on the US timber market found that prices were driven down and that the industry's reputation was tarnished.

 

The American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA) hired Seneca Creek Associates and Wood Resources Institute to write ‘Illegal Logging and Global Wood Markets: The Competitive Impacts on the U.S. Wood Products Industry’.

 

The paper looks at illegal logging in Brazil, Central and West Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Russia and at suspicious forest product imports into China, Europe, and Japan.

 

It also produces findings from a simulation model that analyses the effect of illegal logging on world trade.

 

The authors found: 

• Economic analysis based on simulations from the Global Forest Products Model (GFPM) suggests that illegal material depresses world prices by 7% - 16% on average,
• Illegal forest activity (of the type that rises to a level of international concern) represents between 5% and 10% of global industrial roundwood production – approximately 4% for softwood, but 15% for hardwood. 
• Smuggling, money laundering and other criminal activity in the forest sector have been alleged in some countries and, in some cases, prosecuted.

The paper says that the impact on the public perception that ‘wood is good’ is damaged by the use of illegal lumber and that this should concern the whole industry.