Politicians, industry representatives and NGOs in Australia are crafting legislation that would prohibit commerce in illegally logged timber.
In March, Australia's Senate released preliminary legislation that would 1) ban illegally logged timber 2) require timber importers and domestic processors to meet "legal logging requirements" and receive timber industry certification 3) define legally logged timber products, and 4) establish monitoring and enforcement powers.
A Senate committee, acting on feedback from NGOs and timber industry representatives, Lacey Act was amended to ban commerce in illegally sourced wood and wood products, including wood flooring.
According to Greenpeace Australia's Reece Turner, a forests campaigner, politicians promised to bring forward an illegal timber ban during elections in 2010, and that the ban is on the Parliamentary timetable for the Spring session, which will begin in September.
"The [government] now has the task of considering the Senate inquiry report, but it's completely at liberty as to whether it will adopt the recommendations or the submissions stakeholders made," Turner wrote in an email. "We've been leading this campaign (for way too many years now) to get laws in similar to the Lacey Act."
According to a memorandum circulated in Australia's Senate, the aim of the Illegal Logging Prohibition Bill 2011 "is to reduce the harmful environmental, social and economic impacts of illegal logging …"
