Cambodia has the 5th fastest rate of deforestation in the world. By law, the government have to put any wood that is seized from illegal logging activity up for auction with the proceeds deposited in the state treasury. However these auctions are not transparent, and corruption is rife. Illegal wood is often sold to government officials at cheaper than market prices, which actually promotes further illegal logging activity. The investigative report highlights cases of corruption and the attempts to stop the trade of illegally sourced wood by NGOs.

Rainforest Connection, a non-profit based in San Francisco, plans to install used Android smartphones in rainforests to help curtail illegal logging. The phones have been configured to trigger an alert for noises that match the sound signature of a chainsaw within an area of about a third of a square mile. The organisation claims this can be done at minimal cost – for example, in Indonesia unlimited data for one phone costs just $2.89 per month – and the phones can be powered using solar energy. The venture is seeking funding through the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter.

A recently published paper in the journal Science assesses how Brazil managed to reduce its deforestation rates by 70% over the course of a decade and points to a three-stage process in which bans, better governance in frontier areas and consumer pressure on companies worked, if fitfully and only after several false starts. While the Brazilian Forest Code from the mid-1990s mandated that 80% of farm land had to be set aside as a forest reserve, deforestation rates reached their highest as the code was not enforced. However, from 2005 Brazil’s President Lula da Silva made halting deforestation a priority which led to better cooperation between enforcement agencies and public prosecutors. At the same time, improvements in the efficiency of cattle breeding, a fall in export earnings from soybeans and an NGO campaign to boycott Brazilian soybeans caused deforestation to plummet. Then in 2009, once soybean expansion resumed, the government focused its efforts on the counties with the worst deforestation rates and banned them from getting cheap credit until the rates fell. Other reinforcing factors included a proper land registry, a cattle boycott, an amnesty for illegal clearances before 2008 and money from a special $1 billion Amazon Fund financed by foreign aid.

A new report titled ‘Logging Concessions Enable Illegal Logging Crisis in the Peruvian Amazon’ has found that the Peruvian Forest Law is being exploited for illegal purposes. Loggers are required to declare which individual, GPS-referenced trees will be cut in a one or five year period. As a result many have invented the existence of trees, they then log in other areas and claim trees came from inside their concessions and use the paperwork from these concessions to “prove” it. In over half the cases violations have related to CITES-listed cedar species. Nearly 70% of the concessions inspected have been suspected of “major violations”. This follows what was supposed to be a strengthening of the law through a trade agreement between Peru and the United States in 2009. The report’s authors say the root of the problem is that the authorities only check the regulatory documents in transport or at port arrival well after the logging has taken place. The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has previously been highly critical of Peruvian logging practices highlighting the abuse of migrant workers and strategies designed to confuse the authorities in order to cover up illegal logging.

A new Global Witness report, ‘Deadly Environment’, shows there has been a surge in the killing of activists protecting land rights and the environment over the past decade with three times as many deaths in 2012 compared to the previous 10 years. Between 2002 and 2013, at least 908 activists were killed in 35 countries with only 10 convictions. The most deadly countries in the scope of the report were Brazil (448 since 2002), Honduras (109), Philippines (67), Peru (58) and Thailand (16). The deaths are linked to activism against a range of activities including illegal logging, cattle ranching, soy bean farming, mining and the building of hydroelectric dams.

A recent news briefing by the EIA, entitled “Data Corruption: Exposing the true scale of logging in Myanmar”, which scrutinises official figures on log harvests and timber exports over the past 15 years has indicated widespread criminality and official corruption in the area. The report found that between 2000 and 2013, only 28% trade was recorded, suggesting that the remaining 72% of log shipments were illegal. These illegal exports were worth four times the combined 2013-14 education and health budgets for the entire of the US, at a value of US$6 billion. The EIA has called on the Government of Myanmar to vigorously enforce a log export ban effective from April 1st 2013, as well as significantly increasing transparency in the management of forest resources.

The second largest US grocery chain, Safeway, has established a policy that excludes deforestation-linked palm oil from its products. Safeway is asking its suppliers to implement social and environmental criteria that ensure the palm oil it uses in branded products is “free of deforestation, free of expansion on carbon-rich peat lands…” Safeway’s move was immediately welcomed by the Rainforest Action Network, which has been campaigning to push American companies to demand greener palm oil.

Monks and villagers in Ubon Ratchathani’s Khemmarat district of Thailand have teamed up to protect their 100-year old Siamese rosewood forest from illegal logging gangs. The rosewood trees in this area have grown naturally for 100 years, and most are more than six metres high. By closing the temple doors during the night, the monks are preventing illegal logging gangs from entering the temple and cutting down the trees. Most illegally cut rosewood trees are transferred to China via Laos and Vietnam. During 2008 – 2014, over 27,000 pieces of Siamese rosewood have been confiscated by police and some 395 offenders arrested.

The stationary giant Staples is the first company to have rekindled its relationship with Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) just over a year after APP announced the implementation of its forest conservation policy (FCP). Staples has agreed to sell two paper products manufactured by APP and produced at APP’s Indah Kiat Pulp & Paper mill in Indonesia. The move from Staples has been met with criticism from some eNGO’s who have accused it of “jumping the gun.” Campaigners from the Rainforest Action Network staged a demonstration outside a branch of Staples.

Activists with Rainforest Action Network (RAN) staged a protest today at a Staples store in El Cerrito, Ca to communicate their objection to the office supply giant’s recent decision to resume purchasing paper from Indonesia’s highly controversial company Asia Pulp and Paper (APP).
“Given APP’s track record of broken commitments and the fact that APP has yet to finish environmental studies, put forest conservation plans in place or get independent verification that they are actually working, Staples is jumping the gun by renewing business with APP.” said Lafcadio Cortesi, Asia director at Rainforest Action Network.

Following a long-running international campaign, government troops in Brazil have begun to evict illegal settlers from an area belonging to one of the world's most endangered tribal groups called the Awá. Six months ago Brazil’s military had launched a ground operation against illegal logging around the land of the Awá. The forces closed down at least eight saw mills and confiscated and destroyed other machinery, but they did not remove the loggers and ranchers from inside the Awá’s land.

West Africa's biggest rainforest has won a reprieve from destruction with Liberia's government cancelling dozens of illegal logging permits, saving up to 10,000 square miles from being cleared. Earlier in the year the government had granted licences allowing companies to cut down 58 per cent of all the primary rainforest left in the country. The licences were handed out in breach of Liberia’s own law, generally to companies backed by Malaysian and Chinese investors. The case was first highlighted by Global Witness.

Canada’s Resolute Forest Products have had 3 of its forest management certificates suspended following complaints filed by the Grand Council of the Crees; the representing body of the First nations communities, as well as Greenpeace. The certificate suspension is due to the company failing to meet various FSC requirements including the protection of high conservation values and support from stakeholders for its operation. The suspended forest management certificates mean that Resolute can no longer label their pulp, paper and wood products as FSC-certified.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have joined forces to promote viable forestry investment and innovation in the Russian Federation's Far East based on sustainable use of forest resources. Improving legal frameworks and the inventory of forest resources; developing modern forestry infrastructures and supporting services, in particular railway transportation networks; introducing modern logging, as well as harvesting and wood-processing technologies; providing adequate training at local level; clearly designating and protecting forest areas of high biodiversity value are among the key Roadmap recommendations.

Peruvian environmental prosecutor, Francisco Berrospi, comments on the corruption he has experienced first-hand across the timber trade in the Peruvian Amazon. A slideshow also accompanies this story: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2013/10/19/world/americas/20131019Peru.html?ref=americas

Illegal logging has fuelled the rapid disappearance of commercially viable forests and threatened indigenous livelihoods in the Solomon Islands. But local communities are confronting the companies responsible and taking them through the courts.

Although certification is often attributed with helping to reduce deforestation, little is known about the effectiveness of many of the schemes. It is vital that we understand how these commitments can be transformed into results if we want to measure changes in deforestation rates. This article suggests that addressing deforestation in the most successful manner may derive from using a combination of approaches, and certification is just one of these approaches.

New checks on Indonesian timber are being introduced by the EU to curb illegal logging. The EU is Indonesia’s biggest export market for timber, with Germany, the UK, France and Italy among the major importers.
From now on, only Indonesian timber compliant with the EU’s verification system, called Forest Law Enforcement Governance (FLEGT) will be imported into the EU. The European Commission says the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with Indonesia commits both sides to only trade in verified legal timber products.

In response to the dramatic decline of forest cover in West Africa, 15 member countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have agreed to work together across borders to protect and manage the region’s forests and wildlife. The Convergence Plan for the Sustainable Management and use of Forest Ecosystems in West Africa was adopted alongside the Sub-regional Action Program to Combat Desertification at a meeting on 12 September 2013.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s Global Forest Assessment 2010 reported that 870,000 ha of forests were lost in the sub-region each year between 2000 and 2010. The convergence plan notes that these losses were due primarily to illegal cutting, brush fires, extensive agriculture (farming over large areas of land with low productivity) and transhumance (moving livestock from one grazing area to another), as well as legal, political, technical and economic limitations.

Aerial footage of the Peruvian Amazon shows large-scale forest clearance as a result of gold mining operations. The rate of expansion of gold mining operations has tripled in recent years, and reports suggest the majority of mining is illegal.