Deal with Beijing helps one of world’s most forested nations fight illegal logging

When the value of each of the hundreds of the containers was added up, the total came to about US$252 million.

The containers seized in the Gabonese capital of Libreville in early 2019 held kevazingo, a rare type of hardwood that can take hundreds of years to grow.

Kevazingo timber is used to make high-end furniture that can sell for as high as US$1 million but Gabon banned the logging and export of the timber in 2018 to protect it from extinction.

The illegal cargo seized in Libreville was found at the depots of two Chinese-owned companies, according to Enact, or Enhancing African Capacity to Combat Transnational Organised Crime.

The scandal led to the suspension and sacking of government officials, and highlighted the role of Chinese players in the illegal trade.

But it was also followed by the signing of an agreement with China that some say could be the key to the timber’s future.

Gabon, on the west coast of Central Africa, is one of the most forested countries in the world, with over 80 per cent covered by rainforests.

It sits in the Congo Basin, home to the planet’s second-biggest tropical forest after the Amazon, and just like many countries in the region, has been plagued by illegal logging of timber, threatening biodiversity.

As demand for wood and its products rose, so too did the logging, with Chinese companies taking much of the blame for the multimillion-dollar illegal trade.

Chinese companies also came under attack for their involvement in massive construction projects in Africa, with accusations that they contributed to deforestation “due to a lack of comprehensive, effective management measures and a lack of environmental impact analyses”.

In 2010, Gabon sought to stamp out the trade by banning the export of logs but it instead led to an increase in illegal felling, according to Lee White, Gabon’s minister for forests, oceans, the environment and climate change.

White said about a dozen Chinese companies owned forest concessions in the country, covering more than 6 million hectares or about 40 per cent of the country’s concessions.

“A lot of the time, Chinese companies have bought forest concession rights from Gabonese companies,” he said.

Before the ban, the companies often made 40 per cent or more profit by evading taxes in Gabon, he said.

“Once the ban was imposed, they couldn’t make easy money. That is what led to the spike in illegal logging,” White said.

“To keep their profits at a 30 per cent to 40 per cent margin, they did illegal logging. They started going out of their concessions, stealing timber.”

Gabon reversed the ban in 2019 but imposed a new condition – that all timber be processed locally.

At the same time, China signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Gabon “to promote sustainable forest management, combat illegal timber logging, and develop Gabon’s forestry industry”.

The deal allows the two countries to work together to wipe out illegal logging by Chinese companies in the Central African country.

Lee said the MOU signed had helped to cut illegal logging cases dramatically.

“We signed an agreement with them to work together to make sure that timber going from Gabon to China is legal and sustainable. Things have changed in the past two years.”

White said Beijing enacted “a series of policies, guidelines, initiatives and legislation” that outlawed illegal logging, making it difficult to export stolen wood to China or European countries where traceability of the timber is crucial.

He said when companies sold wood to China, Europe or the United States, they needed traceability to prove they had legal timber. Without it, they could not sell in those countries.

“So, it has become a big issue in China. China is now very strong in preventing Chinese companies from illegal forestry abroad,” the minister said.

White said Gabon had also asked the Chinese government to “provide us with Chinese police officers to help us with forest protection and training”.

In a study released last year, the Congo Basin Forest Partnership, a non-profit regional body, said the changes to the Chinese legislation were “a promising leap in the enforceable regulation of Chinese overseas forestry investment and timber trade”.

But it also said there were signs that timber exports to China might still “entail illicit practices”. The partnership said the Centre for International Forestry Research found there was “a continued predominance of unprocessed logs in trade with possible negative consequences for revenue, added value, job creation and forest sustainability”.

Raphael Edou, Africa programme manager for EIA-US Forest Campaigns, said there were also problems with transparency in the industry.

“Logging and more broadly timber supply chains in the Congo Basin are still alarmingly opaque and tainted by multiple illegalities, which occur at the logging rights allocation, felling operations deep into the forest, or at the port for the export,” Edou said.