A global fraud, hidden from view, is undermining international sanctions and destroying critical forests. The racket is called “timber trafficking”, and it is, according to INTERPOL, the third most profitable cross-border crime after counterfeiting and drug trafficking.
Last year, Wood Central reported that a surge in black-market timber was infiltrating European and North American supply chains – leading the UN Office on Drugs and Crime to claim “forest crime has all the hallmarks of organised and sophisticated crime” and is “fertile ground for corruption.”
This led the European Union to introduce new legislation making timber trafficking a crime, with trafficking, deforestation, forest fires, and pollution met with fines worth tens of millions of euros or up to five per cent of a company’s global turnover with orders to repair damage caused and the revocation of licences.
According to INTERPOL, the trade could be worth up to $150 billion a year (between 15% and 30% of the total value of global forest products), with high returns and low prosecution rates, making it good business for organised crime.
“In the past year alone, 120 million tons of European timber had no official certificate of origin,” according to a report by DW Europe late last year, with the National Whistleblower Center reporting that “23 to 30% of hardwood lumber and plywood traded globally come from illegal logging.”
“That’s because criminals manipulate paperwork and complex supply chains to cheat border checks, certifications, and regulations, according to a new report from the Financial Times yesterday, which reports that World Forest ID, now working with governments and the world’s largest timber consumers, including IKEA, is cracking the code on illegal logging, using timber testing to kill off the multi-billion-dollar racket forever.
World Forests ID Checked: Illegal Timber to Vanish?
It comes as a crack team of global scientists is analysing thousands of tree samples and layering them in advanced statistical models using artificial intelligence—creating a database allowing customs officials and corporate auditors to verify timber origins with a simple, lab-based test.
That includes Professor Peter Gasson, research leader at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew: “It always amazes me that you take a tiny scrap of wood and have a pretty good idea of what kind of tree it comes from.”
Professor Gasson is part of a team that has collected 100,000 specimens of timber and has, since 2017, worked with FSC International, the US Forest Service and now global governments – including Australia – to build the world’s most comprehensive database of forest species.
What started as a project focusing on the trade of illegally logged Latin American wood entering the United States supply chain has expanded with on-the-ground reach in the Congo, Moldova, Peru, Thailand, Gabon, the Solomon Islands, Columbia, Cameroon and Brazil.
Establishing a global reference point allows agencies to trace the trade of Myanmar teak, which has used Italy as a smuggling point to circumvent European sanctions, as well as Russian and Belarussian timber, which continues to find a path into EU supply chains.
“That’s the whole point of collecting reference material with imported timbers,” Professor Gasson said. “There’s paperwork that is supposed to say what it is and where it’s from.” However, with DNA technology, “we can confirm or refute those claims.”
Using fingerprint technology, “we can essentially look at the chemical expression of the (tree) genetics, according to Dr Cady Lancaster, Forensic Chemist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, “so each species has a unique chemical fingerprint.”
A jet of gas blasts away a tiny cloud of molecules, which are read and identify the origin of the timber product. “It takes about ten seconds to get to species-level identification on a good day,” Dr Lancaster said.
Cracking the Code on Conflict Timber!
In Belgium, scientists like Dr Victor Deklerck, World Forest ID’s Director of Science, are perfecting a database that can not only tell what the timber is but, crucially, where it comes from.
“We try to verify the harvest location of timber or forestry commodities by sampling physical samples in the field and analysing them for their chemical signature,” Dr Deklerck told the Financial Times. “This chemical signature is important because it changes between locations, allowing us to know where something might come from.”
In effect, it allows the research team to verify the origins of thousands of cubic metres of Russian and Belarussian wood, which has been mixed with ply and traded into the EU. Wood Central has reported that Russia and Belarus—once responsible for 12% of all timber entering the European supply chains—use a “gang of eight” countries, including China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, and Tajikistan, to trade timber into the West.
“We collect the tree’s GPS points, give it a unique back code, and take it to the lab for further testing,” Dr Deklerck said, which comes amid a growing body of research now using stable isotope ratio analysis (SIRA) and trace element analysis (TEA) to verify the origin of timbers.
Why New Technology is Changing Chain of Custody Forever.
In March, Wood Central reported that scientists connected to World Forest ID can now use state-of-the-art technologies to determine, with 82% accuracy, “false claims” and geolocate harvest locations within a 180km to 230 km radius of Russian and Belarussian forest plots.
Wood Central understands the new tech has the potential to completely transform the global supply chain of forest-based products, which has, until now, relied on “origin declaration statements” and third-party certification schemes to demonstrate the “chain of custody” from origin.
That’s why World Forest ID is working with Professor Andrew Lowe, Director of the Environment at the University of Adelaide in Australia, to trace timbers from across the world to a specific region: “From a piece of wood or a sample of timber, we’re able to extract the chemical profile and then analyse the isotype ratio. You’re able to trace that back to a particular geographic region.”
And where baseline forest data cannot be sampled—for example, in conflict zones like Ukraine—World Forest ID is now using AI to fill in the gaps and make predictions based on data from more than 12,500 trees worldwide – with World Forest ID now helping EU officials enforce EUTR (and from next year) EUDR regulations.
“We will never have samples from everywhere,” Dr Jakub Truszkowski, one of World Forest ID’s Data Scientists, said, “but we have been working machine learning models and statistical technologies that allow us to give reliable, robust answers to our end users.”
“This is a new technique for us…we have confirmed that 260 tonnes of timber is in breach of European timber regulations and was Russian wood,” according to Annelies Wynant, a spokesperson from the Belgian Federal Public Service of Health, Food Chain Safety and Environment.
“We have different possibilities for seizing wood. We can also issue fines against the companies and force them to take the necessary measures to avoid putting illegal timber on the European market.”
Why is Timber Trafficking Good Business for Organised Crime?
In recent years, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has noted “an alarming increase” in timber trafficking connected to drug trafficking and corruption. “The illegal timber trade is a complex issue, often involving multiple actors in multiple countries.”
“Illegal activities can occur at all stages in the timber supply chain and range in complexity from local illegal harvesting to international and highly organised criminal syndicates with established commercial supply chains.”
Because timber, especially wood-based cabinets, flooring, weather-resistant decks, and wooden furniture, has complicated supply chains, consumers need help tracing where wood comes from and whether it is legal.
“In many instances, these products are made of tropical wood that presents desirable colours, grains, and durability and are in the vast majority of cases sourced outside of the country,” according to a new report by the Environmental Investigation Agency.
While ecolabels like PEFC, SFI, and FSC help address concerns, ignorance about how the certification works can lead to false and fraudulent product claims.
“Amongst the myriad of issues with forest certification is that the supply chain, procurement professionals and ultimately the consumer do not know what to look for to verify that the product is certified,” a source connected to forest certification told the Wood Central publisher.
“The key is to look at the formal claim on the product itself and to check that the product information matches up with the FSC and PEFC databases for certified products,” they said before adding that “both databases effectively provide the ingredients for the products.”
“If you follow proper due diligence, both schemes effectively address the flood of trafficked timber entering global supply chains.”
- To learn more about the timber trafficking business model, click on Wood Central’s special feature.
