Brazil Cracks Down on Trade in "Green Gold"
Copyright 2001 Inter Press Service
October 31, 2001
By Danielle Knight
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 - Brazilian authorities are cracking down on the logging and export of mahogany after environmentalists documented illegal harvests in the Amazon rainforest and sales to buyers in the United States.
Carlos Fonseca, press attache at the Brazilian Embassy here, said since the release last week of a report by Greenpeace, the government has frozen all mahogany logging, transport, and export operations.
The moratorium on bigleaf mahogany would allow time for officials from the Brazilian environmental agency, IBAMA, to investigate, said Fonseca.
Activists with Greenpeace here and in Brazil confirmed the crackdown on illegal logging today. Forest campaigner Scott Paul said that in the last five days, officials have seized more than 7,000 cubic meters of mahogany worth almost $ 7 million on the international market. He said police raided a sawmill in Para state today.
According to IBAMA, the mill was owned by Osmar Alves Ferreira, identified in Greenpeace's Oct. 24 report as a kingpin in the illegal mahogany trade.
"This is a pivotal moment in Amazon forest politics in Brazil," declared Paul, who said Greenpeace activists accompanied Brazilian officials on some of the raids.
Trade in mahogany -- known as "green gold" -- is extremely lucrative, fetching more than $ 1,600 per cubic meter.
Based on a three-year investigation, Greenpeace documented illegal logging of bigleaf mahogany and tracked the timber to its destinations in the United States and Europe.
The report, Partners in Mahogany Crime, said authorization papers often were fraudulent and mahogany inventories were falsified. Even though the Brazilian government passed a law in 1995 that requires the sustainable management of forests where mahogany is found, illegal logging is still rampant due to lack of enforcement, said the report.
Many operators, it added, have taken advantage of this lack of government oversight and cut down mahogany in unauthorized areas.
The United States is the principal market for Brazilian mahogany, importing more than $ 20 million worth of the endangered wood, or 70 percent of exports, according to the report.
Top U.S. furniture companies are fuelling the trade in mahogany, according to the Greenpeace report. It accused high-end furniture makers, including Ethan Allen, Stickley, Henredon, Drexel Heritage and Georgia Pacific, of buying illegal mahogany from the Amazon rainforest. The companies denied the charge.
Greenpeace said Brazilian timber operators and their U.S. customers violated the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which requires that bigleaf mahogany imported into the United States be accompanied by properly executed export permits and certificates of origin.
Exporters and importers who failed to adhere to these requirements not only ran afoul of CITES but also violated U.S. laws that authorize criminal and civil penalties for importing mahogany illegally.
"This is organized crime and U.S. consumers are unknowingly fuelling it," said Paul.
Among companies that denied the charges, Ethan Allen said it only buys mahogany from Africa. Kelly Maicon, spokesperson for the company, which is one of the country's largest furniture chains, said: "It has been Ethan Allen's policy since 1997 to work toward eliminating the use of Brazilian mahogany lumber in our products."
Georgia Pacific, one of the world's largest forest products corporations, said it made limited purchases of mahogany at a customer's request but that most of it also came from Africa.
"We are always in compliance with national and international laws," said company spokesperson Robin Keegan.
According to Greenpeace, the illegal mahogany industry has been driving the destruction of the biologically-rich Amazon rainforest.
Because high quality mahogany is only found in pristine areas of rainforest, the quest to find these lucrative trees leaves behind a network of roads and trails that other loggers use to access the remaining forest, said Paulo Adario, the group's Amazon campaign coordinator.
More than 80 percent of timber from the Amazon is logged illegally, said Adario, who added he has received death threats since the release of the Greenpeace report.
"It is clear that the only course of action left is to throw these loggers in jail and put an end to this industry until it can be brought under control," he added.