Fighting Illegal Logging with the Lacey Act

For twenty-five years, the Rainforest Alliance has been a conservation organization and not a policy organization. So we don’t often take positions on legislation. But we’ve made an exception for the Lacey Act, a law requiring that all wood products and plants imported into the United States come from legal sources.  Ever since it was amended to include coverage of forest products in 2008, we’ve gone on record many times to express support for it, including in the wake of controversy over recent Lacey enforcement actions against Gibson Guitars.

We’ve publicly defended the Lacey Act, and will again, because Lacey is a global game changer.  It has positively reinforced pioneering forest legality initiatives begun early this century by the EU through the FLEG (Forest Law Enforcement and Governance) effort, spurred initiation of similar legislation in countries as different as Australia and China, and buttressed the actions of many NGOs and civil society organizations fighting to stop illegal logging and trade.

Lacey also brought together a unique, ground-breaking coalition of stakeholders, from environmental organizations to forest products businesses, united in a desire to confront the challenge of illegal logging and illegal trade.  Though recent Lacey enforcement actions have strained some of those relationships, the vast majority of the coalition remains absolutely convinced of the importance and value of the amended Lacey Act.

The respected Chatham House, a UK-based nonprofit thought-leader on international and current affairs, has documented welcome reductions in illegal logging or trade over the past few years, and enacting the Lacey amendment has been part of the reason.  Though Lacey’s impact has already been demonstrably strong, and the Rainforest Alliance does not believe that changes to the actual legislation are necessary, Lacey enforcement might still benefit from a tune-up to make it even stronger.

Instead of a threat to amend the law, the current spotlight on Lacey might be viewed as a potential opportunity to raise and clarify legitimate questions about how the law works practically and how it could work better.  The increased attention on Lacey has already prompted the Department of Justice to state clearly that individuals carrying a guitar are not targets of Lacey enforcement.  US officials indicate that was never the case anyway, but the clarification is still a good thing.

Other good things might come out of the current focus on Lacey enforcement.  It might be an occasion to think about how Lacey could be made more effective in fighting illegal logging and trade.  Can enforcement efforts be better funded?  How can we make sure these efforts are aimed at the key drivers of illegal trade and logging?

But all government policy, even strong policy like Lacey, has its limits.  To protect forests and habitats around the world, we also need public/private partnerships including independent forest monitoring, and private sector initiatives such as forest certification and legality verification, and rigorous retailer/buyer and government procurement policies.

In the late 1970’s, the Rainforest Alliance’s senior vice president of programs, Mohammad Rafiq, a forester by training, was a young forest officer in rural Pakistan — his first job after school — when he was offered lucrative bribes to look the other way when trucks carrying illegally harvested wood passed his checkpoint.  When he refused those bribes, the traffickers did everything in their power to get him out of the way.  But the traffickers couldn’t deter him from a lifelong commitment to conservation.

Other Rainforest Alliance staff members have similar stories to tell from their experiences in Indonesia, Costa Rica, and elsewhere around the world.  For us, illegal logging is not just a policy discourse; it is a living, breathing reality that has threatened many of our colleagues, the independent auditors who evaluate forest operations, the communities where we work and the wildlife and ecosystems we are working to save.  Lacey is one of the most important and effective bulwarks against illegal logging, and the forestry community should seek to support and strengthen it.