Illegal logging in East Asia and the Pacific generates more money than the heroin trade, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's new report "Transnational Organized Crime in East Asia and the Pacific." The $17 billion industry is second only to the production of counterfeit goods, and is commonly embedded within the legal wood products trade, according to the report.
The illicit industry is resulting in severe forest loss, increased greenhouse gas emissions, impoverishment of marginalized communities and institutional corruption.
While China and Vietnam are replanting some stands, they are not recreating the biodiversity that was once there, the report says, but rather essentially creating tree plantations.
Communities that depend on protected forests have seen their lands raided by large, otherwise legitimate companies that either bribe officials for permits or simply cut outside their concessions.
As an example of the deep, institutionalized corruption in some countries, the report cited a case in Indonesia: Between 2005 and 2008, 49 government officials and high-level timber entrepreneurs were tried for their crimes, but as many as 35 were acquitted.
However, the report says some progress is being made. China, the primary destination for illegally harvested logs, has begun importing a growing share of products from safer sources, even if they come from outside the region. In 2011 in Papua New Guinea, a Malaysian company was ordered by the National Court to pay almost $100 million to forest communities for extensively logging outside its concession area some years earlier.
