Republic of the Congo Timber Legality Risk Dashboard
By Forest Trends View PublicationDespite 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 2000, but legal uncertainty since the 2020 Forest Code poses a risk that unprocessed logs continue to be illegally exported to international markets, particularly China and Vietnam. Independent forest monitoring (IFM) has been a key feature of international efforts to improve forest governance since 2007. NGOs continue to document sector-wide illegalities and corruption in the forest sector.