ENVIRONMENT-EU: Member States Under Fire for Illegal Logging

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Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Apr 6 2004 (IPS) - The European Union and its member states are not doing enough to combat illegal logging, says a report released Tuesday.

A ‘Government Barometer’ of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) reveals that the majority of the15 European Union (EU) member states are failing to take action against illegal logging.

Illegal logging means timber being harvested, transported, bought or sold in violation of national laws. This further leads to illegal processing and export, false declaration to customs, or avoidance of taxes and other charges.

WWF says illegal logging will become a "very serious internal market issue" when ten accession countries (Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia) join the bloc in May, bringing 24 million hectares of forests.

The report points out that half of the EU’s wood products come from these countries. Europe’s imports of illegally sourced timber are believed to be worth 1.4 billion dollars (1.2 billion euros) a year.

Earlier WWF reports have said that up to 50 percent of all logging activities in the Russian Far East and in Estonia, and up to 20 percent in Latvia and 27 percent in northwest Russia are illegal.

The European Commission, the EU executive, launched the Action Plan for Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) in May last year.

The Commission said the plan would help combat illegal logging by "helping to improve law enforcement and governance in wood-producing countries, and by working to stop the trade in illegally harvested wood."

But the WWF report shows that the 12 EU countries that were rated in the study – Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK – have so far failed to meet the criteria needed to tackle this problem.

The UK rates highest among the 12. Denmark, Germany and Sweden are credited with moderate performance, while Austria, Finland, France, Greece, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Portugal are rated poorly.

Countries are rated for their position on the development of a voluntary licensing scheme on timber, and on other counts such as their participation in partnerships to combat illegal logging and collaboration in the FLEGT plan.

Member states must make a "real commitment" to tackling the activity, says Duncan Pollard, head of the WWF’s European Forest Programme.

"These countries must speed up their efforts to tackle an illegal activity that destroys nature, impoverishes local communities, and distorts markets," he said in a statement Tuesday. "There is no excuse for inaction: commitment is good, but action is better."

The survey shows that most member states support efforts at the EU level to outlaw import of illegal wood. They tackle illegal logging in accession and candidate countries, and endorse the FLEGT plan, but they are failing to implement strong measures in their domestic markets.

Most EU countries are seen as failing to ensure public procurement of legal and sustainable wood products, or to form partnerships with wood-producing countries to combat the problem.

"The EU has a key role to play in halting illegal harvesting and trade which has become a multi-billion dollar business, destroying nature, impoverishing local communities and distorting markets," WWF European forest communicator Helma Brandlmaier said at the launch of the report.

Jacob Andersen, WWF forest officer for Denmark said he hoped the barometer would provide benchmarks for the EU.

"Governments often make it sound as if they are doing all they can to curb illegal logging and trade, but the reality is different," he said. "Our barometer will make it easy for everybody to see who is taking real action and who is simply hiding behind words."

The WWF is calling on the European Commission to develop "concrete proposals" to combat illegal logging. It says it will continue to monitor government commitments, attitudes, and actions on illegal logging over the coming months. It will update its report in September, taking into account the record of the new accession countries.