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Indonesia’s legal system is failing to act against timber criminals, according to to the local NGO Kaoem Telapak and the British research team of Environmental Investigation Agency. As a result, the country’s top-level efforts to tackle illegal logging and deforestation is seriously undermined. A  new research released today, Criminal Neglect, reveals that enforcement action through the courts was taken against only a handful of companies out of more than 50 investigated which were proven to have either traded directly or indirectly in illegal timber.

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The Indonesian paper mill Asia Pulp & Paper promised 8 years ago to become a responsible company. For seven years this company failed to show serious implementation on many parts if its own commitment. The eight year it started to delete it. Buyers should know, they are just buying empty words. New evidence indicates that buyers and banks’ ineffective due diligence systems have allowed Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), a global market paper supplier, to ignore its own forest conservation and human rights pledges, with the result that conflicts and violence continue unabated in the Indonesian regions where the company produces and sources fibres for its paper production.

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A recent report released by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) after three-year investigation, highlighted the Senegal-Gambia-China rosewood traffic and uncovered unprecedented evidence on a series of major forest crimes. According to the report, around 1.6 million rosewood trees were illegally logged in the Casamance province of Senegal and smuggled to Gambia to China between June 2012 and April 2020, to be re-exported to China.

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Today a coalition of civil society organisations published a report about deforestation and peatlands degradation on the rainforest-rich island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. Based on analysis using satellite imagery, the report documents significant deforestation, including clearance of forests on peatlands, in the concession area of PT Adindo Hutani Lestari (Adindo), one of global pulp and paper producer APRIL Group’s largest suppliers of wood to its pulp mill in Indonesia.

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In North Africa, illegal man-made fires are on the rise, driven in large part by a growing demand for charcoal, which is produced by burning wood in underground pits. In the past, local people collected dead wood on a small scale, and larger operations were regulated by the government (3). However, as the demand for charcoal and the price for which it sells have increased, illegal efforts to produce it have multiplied (4). North African countries must address the resulting fires to protect forest ecosystems, which play an important role in the welfare of both urban and rural people and harbor unique and sensitive biodiversity.