OVERVIEW

This website provides information (charts and commentary) about international trade in timber products. Its focus is on tropical timber, particularly that originating in Africa and East Asia, also that which is probably illegal.

The site also includes an introduction to China - perhaps the most important market for both regions' tropical timber, particularly in respect of forest governance - and a summary concerning imports of wooden furniture from East Asia.

It also comments on the relationship between crude oil production and deforestation.

The charts are based on published statistics of declared imports, estimates being made where data (occasionally poor) is anomalous.

Comparing import statistics with corresponding export statistics is simple. An excess of imports over exports points to fraud, other illegality and sloppiness - which contribute to poor governance and loss of national revenue to the (usually heavily) indebted supplying countries. Efforts by multi-lateral and trade entities show little interest in reducing the most glaring mismatches - China's imports - despite the probably high rate of return from any serious investment.

Trade can have a positive and negative impact on illegal logging and sustainable forest management. This website indicates which trade flows are likely to have most leverage on (forest) governance.

So pervasive is illegality (including money-laundering) in the tropical and eastern Russian forest/timber sector that much of that trade (and its finance) should be deemed illegal (by shipping companies, customs and importers) - unless the consignment is independently audited as complying with the letter of the producer country's law (and where this is ambiguous, the spirit of that law or internationally binding minima). Care will be needed to not prejudice countries whose law is good or companies/communities which demonstrate commitment to legality.

Wooden furniture and wood-based products exported from countries which import large quantities of such timber for export - most notably China - should also be deemed illegal unless credibly and independently certified to the contrary.

The unassailable(?) sovereign right of heads of state to corrupt the instruments of government (including the judiciary), over-rule the law, and liquidate their national assets in a manner contrary to the national interest (at times at the behest of "development" agencies) is a major handicap. Re-establishing land and other rights for forest people is probably a pre-condition for long term forest stewardship - urgently required not least because commercially viable forest is being lost so fast. Forest cover statistics are a misleading proxy of forest value.