What problem did it address, where?

Illegal operations in the forest sector take place when wood is harvested, transported, processed, bought or sold in violation of national laws. The underlying causes of illegal operations in the forest sector include a flawed policy and legal framework; minimal enforcement capacity; insufficient data and information about the forest resource and illegal operations; and corruption in the private sector and in government. Strategies to improve law compliance in the forest sector must be based on assessment of the underlying causes of illegal acts and identification of the leverage points to combat corruption. Several international initiatives have emerged over the last few years to tackle the problem of corruption and illegal forest activities. Without comprehensive political will to improve forest law compliance, any measures taken have only a limited chance of success. Experience has been acquired through case study work in Bolivia, Cambodia, Cameroon, Ecuador, Honduras, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Peru

How?

Any strategy aimed at addressing the problem of illegal activities needs to be holistic and include a wide range of policy, legal, institutional and technical options in order to discourage illegal activities and facilitate legal behaviour. A number of steps can be taken in order to streamline and rationalize forest policies and laws. At the same time governments can increase the efficiency of the public forest administration and build capacity for forest law enforcement

• prioritizing and strategically focusing the law enforcement efforts of the public forest administration on key actions, regions or actors;
• increasing the operational capacity of the forest administration to detect and suppress forest crimes, for instance by re-structuring or creating new institutional bodies and increasing staff number and performance;
• promoting better interagency linkages at national and local levels;
• establishing partnerships with appropriate NGOs, civil society or private sector actors to support enforcement and/or monitoring;
• encouraging the development and use of independent forest certification and voluntary corporate codes of conduct;
• engaging in bilateral agreements with selected trading partners or in multilateral agreements involving a large number of exporting and importing countries to limit illegal timber trade;
• tapping into the forest law compliance programmes of international organizations dealing with natural resource use;
• enabling citizens, supported where necessary by NGOs and government agents, to assist in monitoring and detecting forest crime.

Where next?

Areas with persistent problems of forest law compliance.

Related links

• "Forest Law Compliance" (Forestry Paper 145, 2005)