The Mpingo Conservation & Development Initiative : Illegal Logging

Illegal logging is a serious problem across the tropics, and the tropical timber industry as a whole has a poor reputation for corruption and environmental destruction. In the public's mind this is often associated with clear felling of pristine tropical rain forest. However, a lot of illegal logging is highly selective, targeting only the most valuable trees such as mahogany, and can equally well take place in dry forests, such as the Miombo woodlands in Tanzania and Mozambique.

In fact, due to the more open nature of these forests, access roads are less work to construct and selective logging is easier. Mpingo is one of the highly prized timbers in these forests along with paurosa, African mahogany, mninga and mvule. These trees can be easily felled inside the forest without greatly affecting surrounding vegetation, but doing so devalues the forest. If this logging is not done sustainably then over time the forest loses much of its standing value, and will eventually be felled for charcoal, or cleared for agriculture. Hence, if this is not halted, in the long run, unsustainable logging can be as bad for the forest as clear felling.

In order to guard against this scenario forest authorities around the world typically produce management plans which detail how individual forest blocks will be managed sustainably, although many developing countries, such as Tanzania and Mozambique, lack the resources to complete this exercise properly. Forest authorities also tax logging operations through charging royalties or concession fees, and will seek to do so even where a formal management plan does not exist. Unethical logging companies desiring to minimise their costs will therefore try to avoid paying these taxes. If the royalties have not been paid, then any management plan will not have been followed, and no attempt to ensure sustainability made. Illegal logging is thus the worst form of unsustainable forestry, and it is no coincidence that international organisations around the world trying to achieve sustainable forest management focus first on achieving legal logging, e.g. the EU's FLEGT programme.

In recent years, illegal logging has become front page news in Tanzania, with a series of scandals. In one instance, of over 100 containers containing timber which were siezed at the port of Dar es Salaam, not one contained within it what was described on the official manifest. Export of unsawn logs is banned in Tanzania except for teak (which is grown in plantations), and yet many such cases have been uncovered. A lot of timber is first taken to Zanzibar (this does not count as an export), but Zanzibar's own regulations are a lot less strict allowing timber to be then re-exported from there with minimum hassle from the authorities. Many different tactics are adopted by illegal loggers; some never buy a logging permit in the first place, others re-use the same permit many times over; often loggers will buy a cheap permit for less valuable species, but use it to cover highly prized timbers. In all cases bribes and kick-backs will be paid to government officials who agree to look the other way. All these issues, and the governance failures that lie behind them, were documented in a ground-breaking report by TRAFFIC. In total TRAFFIC found that an estimated 96% of timber extracted from south-eastern Tanzania in 2004-5 was illegally logged, and that the country had lost around US $58m in revenue as a result.