Publications

Timber Legality Risk Dashboard: Cameroon

Cameroon’s forest area is estimated at 20.3 million hectares or 43 percent of the total land area. Cameroon has a long tradition of commercial logging, with the forestry sector contributing 6 percent of the country’s GDP and providing about $124 million of tax revenues to the state based on estimates for 2012. Most of Cameroon’s […]

Timber Legality Risk Dashboard: China

China’s domestic supply of industrial wood has failed to keep up with its industrial manufacturing capacity. To meet this deficit, China relies on significant volumes of wood product imports. Logging in China’s natural forests is prohibited, and domestic plantation-grown raw material (primarily poplar, eucalyptus, masson pine, and Chinese fir) are generally considered low-risk. Many similar […]

Thailand Timber Legality Risk Dashboard

Thailand’s forest area has remained relatively stable above 30 percent of the total land area since 2014. This reflects some localized high rates of natural forest loss in the north of the country accompanied by strong reforestation and plantation development policies. Thailand has banned harvesting from natural forests since 1989 which means that the main […]

Ghana Timber Legality Risk Dashboard

Ghana was one of the first countries to have signed a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with the European Union (EU) in 2009. Twelve years later, Ghana is poised to become the first country in Africa to issue Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) timber licenses, thereby enabling all its licensed timber products to automatically […]

Vietnam Timber Legality Risk Dashboard

On September 1, 2020, the Government of Vietnam issued Decree 102/2020/ND-CP enacting Vietnam’s Timber Legality Assurance System (VNTLAS) as part of its commitments under the Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA), a bilateral trade agreement with the European Union, but which covers all timber imported and exported from Vietnam. One […]

State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2021

Installment 1: Market in Motion

This first installment of EM’s flagship State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets (SOVCM) 2021 report offers insights into key trends and developments related to international voluntary carbon credits (also referred to as carbon offsets), based upon aggregated and anonymized EM Global Carbon Survey Respondent-reported data and interviews.

Peru Timber Legality Risk Dashboard

Illegal logging is widespread and a high percentage of Peru’s timber exports are high-risk for illegal harvest. Fraud and corruption are common and there is a risk that illegal timber is laundered into supply chains for all species. Official documentation is therefore not, in and of itself, sufficient to guarantee the legal origin of timber […]

Republic of the Congo Timber Legality Risk Dashboard

Despite improvements to the legislative framework for forest management in 2020, illegal logging remains pervasive in the Republic of the Congo (ROC). The security situation in ROC is improving following a decade of violence in the 1990s, but corruption reportedly permeates almost every sector of the economy. ROC has restricted exports of unprocessed products since […]

Ukraine Timber Legality Risk Dashboard

Ukraine’s political context, including policies, institutional governance, and management of forests is rapidly evolving. Most information available to international audiences related to illegal activities in the forest sector has been driven by high profile investigations released in 2018 and 2020 by the NGO Earthsight. This includes allegations of illegal timber entering FSC-certified timber supply chains. […]

Indonesia Timber Legality Risk Dashboard

Indonesia is the first, and currently, only, country in the world with an operational Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) licensing scheme. This means that the Government of Indonesia has made significant efforts to develop a mandatory national system to track and verify legality and control illegal timber, called the Sistem Verifikasi Legalitas Kayu […]