Underlying causes of the rapid expansion of illegal exploitation of tropical timber

摘要

The notion of 'illegal exploitation' is more difficult to define than one would expect. The laws and regulations vary a great deal from country to country. Offences are different and haphazard, and all have different degrees of seriousness, as they concern the laws of the country or the management of resources. We run the risk of penalising the very countries that are making an effort to better their regulation systems. When Friends of the Earth claims, as it did in 2001, that 70 percent of wood iscut illegally in Gabon, based on the fact that only part of the profession has begun to put into practice management plans which have become compulsory, it gives an erroneous picture of the evolution of the forest and of its management conditions. Development prospects are rather better in Gabon than in other places, and the resource is less in jeopardy than in neighbouring Equatorial Guinea for example.