Companies have abused licences known as Private Use Permits (PUPs) to buy up a quarter of Liberia’s total land mass in just two years, placing the country’s forests and the people who depend upon them under severe threat and risking the collapse of the country’s fragile post-conflict reform efforts, a new report by Global Witness has found.
The new report, Logging in the shadows, identifies a largely hidden pattern of abuse across Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ghana and Liberia, in which permits designed to promote small businesses and meet local needs are being allocated in their hundreds to industrial logging companies. These “shadow permits” open the door to highly lucrative, large-scale logging operations which bypass oversight by the authorities.
The Logging in the shadows report details how in the DRC, dozens of Artisanal Logging Permits were allocated between 2010 and 2012, mostly to foreign industrial companies, violating DRC's forest laws in at least ten different ways; how in Ghana, the Forestry Commission secretly granted more than 400 Salvage Permits while assuring civil society and the EU that it was addressing their concerns; and how in Cameroon, throughout 2011, the former Minister of Forests granted dozens of ‘small titles', a long-standing byword for illegal logging, while pretending to regulate them.
In the case of Liberia, the report documents that Private Use Permits were initially envisaged to allow private land owners to use their forest resources, but remained the only title category for which no regulation was developed. This loophole allowed officials of the Forest Development Authority (FDA) to collude with logging companies and convince communities to hand over their forests. A sudden explosion in their use saw over 40% of Liberia’s forests granted to logging companies in just two years, making the permits the main source of commercial timber in Liberia.
This report identifies a pattern of abuse across four countries in Africa whereby political elites, forestry officials and logging companies are colluding to maintain easy access to timber. In doing so they are systematically bypassing new laws and environmental safeguards designed to protect forests and the communities that live in them. The extensive granting of shadow permits in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia, Ghana and Cameroon shows that corruption is still the main threat to tropical rainforests, and is robbing communities and local people of their livelihoods.
It notes that systemic and targeted abuse of small, poorly regulated logging permits by logging companies is facilitating quick access to forests for commercial logging, in spite of tighter regulations and oversight. These ‘shadow permits’ are allocated in secret and subject to few controls over their operations. Their characteristics typically include low taxation, poor consultation with local people and minimal environmental requirements.
According to the report, originally intended to promote small, local enterprises and to meet local needs in a controlled, regulated way, shadow permits are now being allocated in their hundreds for commercial use. Once allocated, shadow permits can open the door to large-scale, intensive and exceptionally profitable logging operations due the absence of effective oversight by the authorities.
“Governments and other relevant authorities have repeatedly failed to stop the abuse of shadow permits, with the result that logging is often much more extensive and damaging to forests than originally intended. European-led reform efforts have focused on largescale concessions that produce timber for export with the result that logging is often much more extensive and damaging to forests than originally intended.
“European-led reform efforts have focused on largescale concessions that produce timber for export but in each country shadow permits have provided a loophole to bypass tighter regulations. Weaknesses in legal frameworks, and corruption at all levels of government, have enabled companies to continue to export large amounts of timber to the EU, US and China. In some cases, shadow permits have opened the way for trade in rare or threatened species, such as rosewood and wenge. As well as giving loggers access to the forests in the first place, shadow permits add a veneer of legality to timber for export,” the global concession watchdog said in its latest report.
Global Witness furthered that shadow permits are the product of a political economy that privileges power, patronage and vested interests above wider society and the environment. Bad behavior by self-serving and unaccountable elites undermines citizens’ confidence in government and stifles the growth of sustainable local economies. In the absence of a functioning permit system for local use, forest-dependent communities are forced to meet their timber needs illegally, further undermining the rule of law.
“This is a very worrying trend – logging companies are systematically colluding with corrupt officials to get around laws designed to stop them decimating forests and abusing those that live in them. This is massively undermining international efforts to regulate the international timber trade, notably the EU’s Voluntary Partnership Agreements and Timber Regulation,” said Alexandra Pardal, Europe Campaigner at Global Witness.
According to Global Witness, €12.4 billion worth of timber considered to pose a high risk of illegality entered the EU in 2011. In March 2013 the EU Timber Regulation prohibited the import of illegal timber, but in the past two months Global Witness and Greenpeace have uncovered suspicious log shipments in EU ports from two of the countries featured in Logging in the shadows.
Meanwhile, the EU has been developing Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs) with timber-exporting countries, which involve comprehensive forest governance reforms aimed at stamping out the illegal trade. Neither the EU Timber Regulation nor the VPAs take account of the widespread use of shadow permits, however. This means they could end up laundering the type of wood products they were designed to exclude
"Unless European and African policy-makers take urgent action, shadow permits could become the Trojan horse by which illegal timber is brought into the EU and passed off as legitimate. Timber importers must do proper checks right the way along their supply chains to make sure they know exactly where their timber came from and whether the permit used to get it was legal,” said Pardal.
"The EU’s investment in protecting some of the world’s most precious rainforests is very welcome, but unless its reforms address all types of permits being used, they will fail and the forests will be gone. We have seen specific loopholes closed in DRC or Liberia, but the problem appears to change shape slightly and reemerge with a new name. Transparency, openness, and competitive bidding processes should be the rule for all types of logging permit.” said Pardal.
Access the full report here.
No comments:
Post a Comment