- Research has shown that the origin of most of the wood that leaves Peru is unknown.
- A new report reveals that most of the wood exported from Peru in 2015 was of illegal or unknown origin.
- Published by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), the report says that the amount of illegally-sourced wood bound for export remains extremely high three years after a major bust.
LIMA, Peru – More than two years after a massive seizure of illegal timber sent from Peru to international markets in the Dominican Republic, Mexico and the United States, much of Peru’s exported wood is still illegal according to a new report. The so-called Operation Amazonas seizure from the vessel the Yacu Kallpa in 2015 was found to be more than 90 percent illegal. An investigation by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) study released in February 2018 shows that a high percentage of the wood that leaves Peru continues to be illegal.
The documentation reviewed by the EIA – whose research was carried out in partnership with the Center for International Environmental Law – corresponds to the inspections carried out in 2015, done at random, by the Administration for Forestry and Wildlife of Lima, an office of the National Forestry and Wildlife Authority (or Serfor in Spanish) that has a control post in Callao, a key Peruvian port.
Data provided by the Serfor office in Callao and reviewed by the EIA reveals that only 16 percent of the shipment’s wood – which was part of a sample selected by the forest authority for verification – was of legal origin.
Another 17 percent corresponds to illegal logging and/or laundering of illegal timber, according to the EIA’s verification process of the origin sites carried out by the Agency for Supervision of Forest Resources (or Osinfor in Spanish).
Regarding the remaining 67 percent, it was not possible to determine the origin, either because the sites have not yet been verified by Osinfor or because sufficient information was not provided to verify the legality of the extraction site.
In essence, the origin of most of the wood that leaves Peru is unknown.
Julia Urrunaga, director of programs in Peru at the EIA, told Mongabay that the information analyzed demonstrates there is a problem.
“[It] clearly shows that there is a status quo that does not care about the legal status of the exported wood,” Urrunaga said. “It is a serious problem, especially since information about the high risk of the illegality of Peruvian timber has been available for a decade. Exporters, instead of taking concrete actions, continue to argue that the purchase of their wood is done in good faith. It is not a reasonable response from a sector that is expected to act responsibly.”
Tracking the wood
According to the EIA report, the sample analyzed at the Port of Callao corresponds to 41 percent of the total annual wood exports from Peru. Its calculated value is nearly $40 million, according to data from the National Superintendence of Tax Administration (or SUNAT in Spanish).
The analysis states that the Peruvian timber exports go to 35 countries on five continents. The main importers by country are China (42 percent), Dominican Republic (20 percent), the United States, (10 percent), followed by Mexico France, and the Netherlands, which all import less than 10 percent.
As part of the analysis, the Forest Transport Guide (or GTF in Spanish) was also evaluated. The GTF is a document that is part of Serfor’s inspection reports which provides timber extraction sites.
Urrunaga explained that to find the wood’s unknown origin, the EIA developed a system of risk categories based on previous verifications. From the evaluation of the 855 inspection reports, it was concluded that 44 percent had a high risk of being illegal wood, 20 percent had a medium risk, and only 36 percent had a low risk.
“Our analysis showed that two-thirds of the wood with unknown origin has a medium or high risk of illegality,” she said.
The illegal wood and the ones that could not be analyzed reached importers in 18 countries. The information provided by the EIA report suggests that exporters look for documents which appear to be legitimate or impossible to trace.
What worries Urrunaga most is the lack of information for the years 2016 and 2017. She explained that after the EIA repeatedly requested the inspection records of the last two years from Serfor, she received only 23 records from 2016. Serfor did not send any documents for 2017.
There’s more.
According to Urrunaga, “The inspection records’ format changed in 2016 and basic data such as the information on the importer and the exporter have been removed. We would have liked to know if advances were made after the international scandal of Operation Amazonas, but without information, it is not possible. How can the government demonstrate that only legal timber is exported if it lacks the information that proves it? Unfortunately, the process has taken a step backwards.”
Mongabay could not reach Serfor for comment by time of publication.
A pending task
The public prosecutor’s office specializing in environmental crimes in the Ministry of Environment, Julio César Guzmán, said that there is no official data on the export of wood.
“There is no reputable study that indicates how much timber is illegally exported, and a percentage of it remains in the domestic market of Peru,” Guzmán said. “The Yacu Kallpa case left us with alarming figures, more than 90 percent of the wood found in those inspections were illegal; although we cannot generalize from a seizure, we have a deficit of information.”
However, Guzmán said that some progress has been made based on the experience of Operation Amazonas.
“Better control has been implemented based on the intervention of Osinfor as an entity that supervises forest resources,” Guzmán said. He pointed out that the SIGO alert system already reports on cargo that could be high risk. “We …supervise areas where illegal timber could potentially come from.”
He also said that the Legislative Decree 1220 allows interdiction for cases of illegal logging.
“If we join these mechanisms we enter a scenario of ideal persecution against criminals,” he said.
However, Guzmán admits that there is still a need to move forward in the dismantling of criminal organizations that live by illegal logging. “We find organizations that have public officials of regional governments within their ranks, so we have to evaluate the control system, it’s easier to control the 20 or 25 regions than the Amazon’s total area. It’s a pending task,” he explained.
How is wood illegally exported?
According to the study, for merchants to obtain legal documents to transport illegally cut trees from national parks, state forests, or indigenous reserves where it is not possible to have authorizations for a commercial extraction, the first thing they do is create inventories with false or misleading information as part of the preparation of their Annual Operating Plans (AOP).
In many cases, the trees registered in the maps and lists that the logging operators attach as part of the documentation of their AOP do not exist in the forest, they are fabricated.
In other cases, trees do exist, but they are in concessions or communities too remote for their commercial extraction to be economically viable – they are real trees, but there is no real intention to cut them down, the study indicates.
The AOP must be signed by a forestry professional and approved by the regional forestry authorities.
“With the approved documents, these trees are already ‘legitimate’, even if the information is false, local officials usually have full knowledge of it and are accomplices in this process,” the investigation states.
Another modality to launder timber occurs in the ‘local forests’ that are managed by the regional authorities. These forests have largely served as illegal wood laundry machines, the EIA study says, with much less supervision than other types of wood sources receive.
Information on local forests was practically not reported by regional governments to Serfor or Osinfor. As of 2015, when the Osinfor began entering the local forests more consistently, they were able to document irregularities, with percentages of illegality higher than those found in concessions, communities, or private properties.
In total, more than 90 percent of the wood in local forests monitored during 2015 was illegal, says the EIA investigation.
Risks in international markets
The United States has begun to take serious measures to reduce the importation of illegal Peruvian timber, notes the report, including the detention of shipments until sufficient documentation is provided to prove the legal origin of the resource.
A case that demonstrates the international sanctions occurred with Inversiones La Oroza, one of the largest exporters in Peru, whose wood was found to be mostly of illegal origin. The company has been sanctioned with a three-year ban on imports.
EIA’s Urrunaga expressed concern about the possibility that the wood that leaves Peru would not be able to enter a series of international markets; especially those that have laws that oblige the importer to prove that it is legal timber, as is the case with the Lacey Act in America, which sanctions the import or commercialization of timber products illegally extracted.
Rolando Navarro is Osinfor’s former executive president who was sacked during the time the seizures were made to the Yacu Kallpa vessel.
Navarro says it is possible to trace the wood from the forest to the export site and vice versa.
“This is something we did during the 2014 and 2015 Operation Amazonas international operations, with the help of information from the GTF provided by the SUNAT,” Navarro said. “We discovered that more than 96 percent of the wood that was transported on the vessel Yacu Kallpa, in December 2015, had illegal origins.”
Navarro, now with the Center for International Environmental Law, questioned why so many entrepreneurs claim that the traceability of wood cannot be done from the forest and yet they request tax benefits to Sunat for their exports. Navarro is confident in ability of the GTF (government forestry monitoring mechanism) to accurately pinpoint the origin of the wood and trace its path to sale. A 1994 measure called the Law for Investment Promotion in the Amazon was established as a protection to that very end.
He also agrees with Urrunaga about the dangers of closing international markets to Peruvian timber.
“The Peruvian government and business groups must take profound measures to guarantee the legal trade in timber and become a reference in the forest management and trade of tropical timber in the world,” he said. “We are facing a great opportunity for change.”
Navarro believes that Operation Amazonas made it possible to put an “open secret” into stark, black and white terms that reveal the organized structures and networks that carry out illegal timber trade activities.
For attorney Guzmán, the only way to fight illegal logging is to coordinate among forestry-related institutions. “There is no other way to win this battle if we do not work in an allied way with a unique vision on this issue,” he said.
Guzmán considers it important to modernize efforts at to stop illegal logging.
We cannot talk about fighting illegal logging that comprises more than one institution if we do not have a clear strategy on how to do it, otherwise we will have isolated efforts,” he said. He added that “we cannot talk about synchronized efforts” until there is an officially-approved coordinated effort.
Banner image: Photo courtesy of EIA.
This story was reported by Mongabay’s Latin America (Latam) team and was first published in Spanish on our Latam site on February 7, 2018.
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