Tackling the trade in illegal timber: a comparative study of legal frameworks

The document examines demand-side timber legality laws across five major importing markets, comparing their scope, actor obligations, and enforcement mechanisms to identify effective legislative options for reducing illegal logging.

• The United States employs the Lacey Act, which prohibits trafficking in plants obtained in breach of foreign laws, including those regulating 'royalties, taxes, or stumpage fees.' It requires a specific import declaration for certain products and allows for criminal penalties up to five years in prison and fines up to USD 500,000 for businesses regarding labelling and declaration violations.
• The European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR), in force since 2013, prohibits placing illegal timber on the EU market and mandates that operators 'exercise due diligence' through a three-step process: access to information, risk assessment, and risk mitigation. Products with FLEGT licences or CITES documents are exempt from this due diligence requirement.
• Australia's Illegal Logging Prohibition Act (ILPA) penalizes the import of illegally logged timber and requires importers to perform due diligence and declare compliance to the Customs Minister. Enforcement of due diligence provisions was delayed, with the full law only enforced six years after passage, in January 2018.
• Japan's Clean Wood Act (CWA), effective May 2017, uses a softer approach where companies 'must endeavour' to use legally harvested wood. It includes a voluntary registration system for companies to adopt specific legality confirmation measures, though some product categories like flooring and paper have shown low rates of legality confirmation.
• The Republic of Korea's Act on the Sustainable Use of Timbers (ASUT), amended in 2017, requires importers to file declarations with the Korea Forest Service. Unlike the EU or US, there is no explicit due diligence requirement for companies, although producers must 'endeavour to import, distribute, produce and sell legally felled timber'.
• Quantitative assessments suggest that the 2008 Lacey Act amendments led to an estimated 32–44 percent decline in illegal timber imports to the US. In the EU, there was a decline in tropical hardwood imports as of 2015, and the FLEGT Action Plan generally decreased illegal timber imports through 2014.

APA

Sky, M. B. (n.d.). Tackling the trade in illegal timber: a comparative study of legal frameworks. Center for International Environmental Law. https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/CIEL_Tackling-the-trade-in-illegal-timber-paper.pdf

Chicago

Sky, Melissa Blue. Tackling the trade in illegal timber: a comparative study of legal frameworks. Center for International Environmental Law, n.d. https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/CIEL_Tackling-the-trade-in-illegal-timber-paper.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Sky |first1=Melissa Blue |title=Tackling the trade in illegal timber: a comparative study of legal frameworks |publisher=Center for International Environmental Law |url=https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/CIEL_Tackling-the-trade-in-illegal-timber-paper.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{skyndtackling, author = {Sky, Melissa Blue}, title = {{Tackling the trade in illegal timber: a comparative study of legal frameworks}}, institution = {Center for International Environmental Law}, url = {https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/CIEL_Tackling-the-trade-in-illegal-timber-paper.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }