How much illegal timber gets into the UK?

Almost one million cubic metres of illegal timber, much of it stripped from threatened rainforest habitats, harming local communities of animals and people, was imported into the UK last year. I have to admit being shocked by today’s audit result. That’s four hundred olympic swimming pools full of unsustainably, unethically sourced wood, ripped from forests of the world’s poorest people and sold to some of the world’s richest.

That is despite the UK’s relatively proactive stance on the issue. As a whole the EU is still a huge importer of illegal timber. The European Commission today threatened to take recalcitrant member states to the European Court of Justice. This is a vital step if measures continue to be ignored. But the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) is not only weakened by non-compliant members. Its exclusion of huge numbers of product types makes it only a half measure. Much, much more needs to be done both in Europe and in the supplier countries to ensure sustainable forestry becomes a global norm.

How big is the UK EUTR enforcement team?

An interesting blog from Chatham House researcher Jade Saunders, in which she examines the slow take up of EUTR measures in some states. She says the fragmented nature of the EU has made it a difficult process.

“By contrast with similar regulation in the US, which is enforced by a small but expert federal team, responsibilities across the EU have been given to a wide range of government agencies and little thought has been put into efficient ways to help them coordinate. For a piece of legislation that is clearly as weak as it’s weakest national enforcement link, this is a serious problem. Time will help, but inevitably limited resources and staff churn across 28 small teams will not be an easy challenge to overcome.”

In July, the BBC’s Panorama traced illegal timber from the Congo into the French port of La Rochelle. It is possible, due to the poor regulation in France and its large timber trade with the UK, that some of these logs ended up in British products.

I have heard from a European Commission (EC) spokesperson that the Commission will now follow up with non-compliant states. Firstly by writing and asking for explanation for their recalcitrance. The spokesperson said continually belligerent member states could eventually be taken to the European Court of Justice.

A spokesperson for the UK’s Department of Environment (Defra) said other member states needed to support the steps taken by the UK and other compliant countries.

“We are doing everything we can to prevent illegal timber being placed on the market in the UK through strong implementation of the European Timber Regulation.

“However, the success of the EUTR in tackling illegal logging also relies on the regulation being implemented consistently across the EU.

“We continue to encourage other Member States to follow the UK’s example.”

Chatham House senior research fellow Alison Hoare has just completed research on the UK’s illegal timber market between 2008 and 2013. She found that the UK imported 940,000 cubic metres of illegal timber in 2013, much of it from China in furniture. This is a drop of about one third since 2008.

Hoare says it is too early to really judge how effective the EUTR ban has been as it only came into effect in March 2013. “In the UK the imports have declined, but it’s very difficult to attribute the cause.” She says work in supplier countries on improving standards at the source was at least as important as any work done on controlling imports in the EU.

Hoare confirms there is a risk that EU countries who do not implement the EUTR standards will act as conduits for illegal timber that can then be traded to compliant states such as the UK.

The UK does import sizeable quantities of timber from some of the EU countries that are not yet implementing the EUTR effectively. Of the 4 countries termed the ‘worst offenders’, Spain and Poland are the most important, with about 1 million cubic metres of timber and paper products coming from each of these countries in 2013, equivalent to about 6% of total imports into the UK from the EU.

But she says it is not the main fragility in the UK’s protections against illegal timber. “The big weakness is not knowing what is in processed products,” she says.

WWF also conduct an assessment of government responses to illegal timber imports, similar to the EC one released yesterday. Their “Government Barometer” was last published in 2012, but it has consistently placed the UK either first or second on the list. But Loraiza Davies, corporate stewardship manager at WWF-UK, says the EUTR alone is not enough to ensure timber imports are sustainable.

“Legality and sustainability are two different things. The EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) has the aim of stopping illegal timber from entering the EU market, but does not legislate for sustainability. So even if the timber traded is legal, it does not mean that is it sustainable, because the EUTR does not require products to comply with sustainability standards.

She says the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certifications) are normally accepted as sustainability measures but the timber derived through them is not necessarily legal under the EUTR. “So only products that are FSC or PEFC certified and have passed the EUTR due diligence checks can be consider to be legal and sustainable.”

She says it is impossible to tell how much illegal timber is actually making it to the UK.

“The UK government has a good track record of implementing the legislation, and they are aware that there are many European countries that are not implementing the legislation yet, so we hope they are taking that into account in their risk assessment.

Only half of all timber exports are covered by EU regulations

Davies says the major concern is not that government’s are not enforcing the EUTR, but that it only covers about half of the EU’s timber imports (by value).

“Even in those countries where the governments are doing their job, we can say for certain that up to 50% of the products can be from illegal sources and European consumers are buying them without even knowing.”

Some products currently not controlled by the EUTR:

• Chairs/seats of all types (garden chairs, dining chairs and all types of chair)
  
• Printed materials
  
• Musical instruments
  
• Hand tools
• Charcoal

Some products that come under the EUTR:

• Most other furniture (apart from chairs)
  
• Wood floors
  
• Wood veneer panels
  
• Pulp and paper
  
• Builder’s joinery
  

The full list can be viewed on the UK Government’s website.

In May this year, Greenpeace found that two of building supplies giant Jewson’s Brazilian partners who supplied timber for decking had been convicted on multiple charges of illegal timber trading.

Solimad Madeiras had been caught on six separate occasions in possession of illegal timber; on two instances, it had stockpiled over 1,500 cubic metres of lumber with no papers or proof of origin. In 2011, Condor Florestas had illegally cleared over 1,000 hectares of rainforest. It was fined over R$5 million (£1,200,000) and banned from the region.

This did not mean that the timber Jewson was buying from these suppliers was necessarily illegal, but it shows how muddy the waters are.

“Much of the plywood, MDF and so on available in the major DIY chains is certified by Forest Stewardship Council or the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification, which reduces the risk of it being illegal (though not entirely),” says Greenpeace forest campaigner Richard George.

“Far more suspect is uncertified timber, and timber products, and tropical hardwood species from high-risk countries and regions, like the Amazon, South-East Asia and the Congo Basin. Those species are commonly used for decking, flooring and construction, including marine defences, but also furniture. Items made from timber imported from high-risk countries and finished in China are particularly risky, unless you can get a proper chain-of-custody that has been certified by the FSC.”

Alison Hoare, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, tells me timbers that are highly processed are most at risk and also mentions furniture. In these processed products a large number of species of different origin are mixed together. “This makes it incredibly difficult to trace what is in them and where it comes from,” says Hoare. Britain is amongst China’s largest EU timber export partners and the Chinese have no internal system for regulating illegal timber trading. This makes the UK susceptible, even with its work to implement EU standards, which Hoare describes as “proactive”.

George says the problems are not restricted to China. The Amazon is also a major source of both legal and illegal timber for the EU.

“In 2013, EU countries imported tropical timber products worth US$148 million from the Brazilian Amazon. Almost half of all timber imported from the Brazilian Amazon into the EU during this period came from the state of Pará, half of whose timber exports went to the EU. Nearly 80% of the area logged in Pará between August 2011 and July 2012 was harvested illegally.”

The UK imported £3 million worth of Amazonian timber in 2013.

A Forest Trends report from 2013 found 82% of EU timber imports came from countries designated as “high risk”. The vast majority of this came as furniture.

In 2009 the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) found that the UK might have then been “one of the world’s largest importers of illegal timber and illegal timber products” because of the country’s failure to implement a ban. The ban was finally put in place in March 2013, when the EU Timber Regulations were put in place.

The EAC said illegal logging:

“... leads to environmental damage and undermines efforts to manage forests sustainably. It also undermines the work done on improving governance in rainforest nations. Illegal timber remains an unacceptable part of the UK timber trade; it is possible that the UK is one of the world’s largest importers of illegal timber and illegal timber products. This failure to ban illegal timber means that the UK is undermining efforts to improve forest governance and contributes to deforestation and its associated emissions.”

A Chatham House report (2010) estimated the UK had imported around 1.5 million cubic metres of illegal timber in 2008. The report gave this summary of the pre-ban situation.

• While UK imports of illegally sourced wood products from Indonesia rapidly declined during 2000–07, this was largely offset by increased imports of illegally sourced wood products from China.

• Estimated imports of illegally sourced wood products into the UK increased between 2000 and 2007, but fell back by 21% in 2008.

• Illegally sourced wood-product imports per capita and as a percentage of total imports also declined in 2008.

• The UK imports more illegally sourced wood products per capita than the US, France, China or Vietnam.

• 59% of the UK’s imports of illegally sourced wood now arrive indirectly via third party processing countries, up from 8% in 2000. This makes cleaning up supplies challenging.

This audit, if we can get some concrete figures, might serve to assess how effective the ban has been.

The trade in unsustainable timber has grown and become ever more sophisticated in recent years according to an Interpol report.

“Illegal logging is not on the decline, rather it is becoming more advanced as cartels become better organised including shifting their illegal activities in order to avoid national or local police efforts. By some estimates, 15 per cent to 30 per cent of the volume of wood traded globally has been obtained illegally.

“Primary methods include falsification of logging permits, bribes to obtain logging permits (in some instances noted as US$20–50,000 per permit), logging beyond concessions, hacking government websites to obtain transport permits for higher volumes or transport, laundering illegal timber by establishing roads, ranches, palm oil or forest plantations and mixing with legal timber during transport or in mills.”

The EU Timber Regulations are an attempt to restrict the trade in restricted wood species. It requires member states to prohibit the sale of illegally harvested timber, force traders to conduct due diligence on their supply chain and ensure they keep records of all suppliers.

The regulations were adopted in 2010, yesterday’s scorecard was a check on the progress of all 28 member countries in enforcing the regulations.

The failure of some member states to comply is worrying. The system relies on all member states to play their part in restricting the flow of these timbers into the union. Once inside the EU market, trade barriers are more porous and can allow these timbers to slip by.

Government efforts to stop illicit rainforest timbers entering the UK market are being undermined by other EU countries, according to the European commission.

Yesterday the commission published a scorecard of the progress European nations had made on implementing protections against the trade of illegally logged timber. It identified a number of countries dragging their heels. This creates gaps through which illegal timber can be surreptitiously traded within the EU. This exposes countries like Britain despite their compliance with the three major safeguards against required under the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) - designation of competent authorities, adoption of penalties and checks on companies’ compliance.

The commission said the results showed “a mixed picture with regard to the implementation of the regulation across the EU. To be effective, the legislation needs to be applied in full in an efficient and effective way, but there is still room for improvement in a number of member states”.

Spain, Poland, Hungary and Malta were the worst offenders, having fullfilled none of their obligations. While Italy, France, Romania, Greece, Latvia, Slovenia, Croatia and Luxembourg were also identified as problems.

How much illegal timber is filtering into the UK? And where does it end up? Join in today’s discussion by contributing in the comments below, tweet me or email me. If you are quoting figures or studies, please provide a link to the original source. Follow me on @karlmathiesen for updates throughout the day and later I will return with my own verdict.