Whether you are building a deck or just buying a nightstand, your purchase can have an impact on forests and people thousands of miles away. Your money could support a sustainable community initiative on the rainforest’s edge—or it could contribute to continued impoverishment of families in Latin America or deforestation in Southeast Asia. The only […]
The United States, the world’s largest consumer of wood products, is a central player in driving the trade in illegally sourced timber. While reliable trade data for illegal goods is inherently scarce, estimates suggest that U.S. consumption of high-risk timber and wood products reaches 10% of the annual import stream – $3.8 billion in high-risk […]
In an effort to staunch the illegal flow of its resources, Indonesia enacted a log export ban in September 2001and a sawn timber export ban in October 2004 (strengthened in February 2006). Despite these laws, U.S. trade data show that 1,570 shipments of Indonesian sawn timber, worth some $30 million,11 entered U.S. ports between November […]
An environmental crime of almost unimaginable scale continues to unfold across Indonesia. Since the late 1990s the country’s forests have been ransacked, with the government acting as little more than a bystander. Vast profits have been accrued by a handful of influential timber barons, which the Indonesian justice system has totally failed to prosecute. As […]
For almost a quarter century, EIA has pioneered the use of undercover investigations to expose environmental crime around the world. In parallel, we have developed a global intelligence and advocacy network at the highest levels of government, civil society and industry. We use this capacity, together with our campaigning and policy analysis expertise, to spur […]
Rampant illegal logging of merbau trees is driving the destruction of the largest remaining tract of virgin tropical forest in Asia – the jungles of the remote Indonesian province of Papua. This destruction is being driven by international demand for cheap merbau timber for use in wood flooring.