How Congo’s rainforest is illegally logged for international markets

The report finds that illegalities are pervasive across DRC's industrial logging concessions, with every visited site between 2011 and 2014 showing violations. These range from over-harvesting and tax avoidance to human rights abuses and the use of fraudulent CITES permits. Despite laws like the EU Timber Regulation and the US Lacey Act, significant volumes of high-risk timber continue to flow to China, Europe, and the US, driven by weak government enforcement and a culture of impunity in the DRC.

• Independent monitoring missions conducted between July 2011 and May 2014 found legal violations in every single industrial logging concession they visited.
• Industrial logging in the DRC is characterized by widespread operational breaches, including logging without permits, harvesting unauthorized species, and over-harvesting. Specifically, monitors documented the illegal over-harvesting of 39,291 m3 of timber valued at nearly €8 million.
• The DRC government's oversight of the forestry sector is almost non-existent due to a lack of political will, corruption, and insufficient resources. In the Equateur province, there are only two sworn forest inspectors for an area of 169,594km2.
• Financial penalties for illegal logging are too low to be deterrents and may actually encourage illegal activity. For example, the fine for illegally logging a cubic metre of tropical timber is US$8, while the timber itself can be worth over a hundred times that amount.
• Logging companies frequently breach social agreements with local communities, leading to conflicts and severe human rights abuses, including beatings and rapes committed by police and military personnel at the companies' request.
• There is a systemic abuse of Artisanal Logging Permits (ALPs), which are intended for small-scale community logging but are instead issued to industrial companies to target endangered species like Wenge.
• The DRC treasury suffered a shortfall of over US$11 million in Forestry Surface Tax receipts during 2011 and 2012, partly due to an illegal deal allowing companies to pay taxes based on 'exploitable surface area' rather than total concession area.
• The DRC has been identified by CITES as one of the two most problematic countries in Africa for illegal resource exploitation, with evidence of fake or falsified permits being used to export protected species like Afrormosia.
• Despite the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) and the US Lacey Act, high-risk timber continues to enter these markets. In 2014, the EU accounted for over 21% of DRC's direct timber exports, worth over US$20 million.
• China is the primary processing hub and destination for DRC timber, receiving 65% of exports in 2014.

APA

Global Witness (2015). How Congo’s rainforest is illegally logged for international markets. https://gw.cdn.ngo/media/documents/Exporting_impunity_Eng.pdf

Chicago

Global Witness. How Congo’s rainforest is illegally logged for international markets. 2015. https://gw.cdn.ngo/media/documents/Exporting_impunity_Eng.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Global Witness |title=How Congo’s rainforest is illegally logged for international markets |date=June 2015 |url=https://gw.cdn.ngo/media/documents/Exporting_impunity_Eng.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{globalwitness2015how, author = {{Global Witness}}, title = {{How Congo’s rainforest is illegally logged for international markets}}, institution = {Global Witness}, year = {2015}, month = jun, url = {https://gw.cdn.ngo/media/documents/Exporting_impunity_Eng.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }