Our investigations expose forest crime and promote policy solutions to eliminate illegally sourced wood products and commodities grown on deforested land from global markets.
Documenting and exposing crimes in forests around the globe, EIA works to reform forest governance and shut down networks that trade in illicit wood products and agricultural commodities driving deforestation
Objectives:
- Uncover the illegal timber trade and expansion of agricultural commodities devastating the forests of the Congo Basin, West Africa, and Madagascar
- Reveal the scale of illegal logging and corruption in Russia and Romania, and build momentum for improved enforcement and forest sector reform
- Curb illegal logging, and stop deforestation caused by the production of commodities such as palm oil across Peru, Colombia, and Honduras
- Expose evidence of illegal timber supply chains in China and Japan, and promote solutions
Enacting and enforcing strong laws against illegal timber and timber products trade in the United States, and other key consumer markets, reduces illegal logging and supports governance reform in forest countries.
Objectives:
- Implement and enforce the U.S. Lacey Act, the EU Timber Regulation, and Australia’s Illegal Logging Prohibition Act
- Promote new strategies in China, Japan and other important markets to shut down the global demand for illegal timber
- Ensure protections for high-value, threatened and endangered species in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)
- Influence multilateral trade agreements and international forest and climate policy initiatives to ensure support for good forest governance and law enforcement
Identifying and investigating high-risk sources of timber and agricultural commodities in specific sectors leads us to their final destination, where we leverage legal mechanisms in market countries to clean up supply chains.
Objectives:
- Understand and track changes in the global marketplace for logs, sawn timber, and finished wood products in order to bring focus to specific governance failures and demand side pressure causing illegal timber trade flows
- Establish protection for threatened high-value tree species being rapidly depleted by profit-seekers
- Track the expansion of largescale agricultural commodity development that threatens forest governance and preservation in emerging frontier areas, particularly oil palm plantations
- Support civil society and local communities in forest countries to defend themselves against land rights violations and other human rights abuses
Creating space and elevating the voices of people who live in and depend upon forests and have real-time, important information and proposals to defend them.
Objectives:
- Build capacity for local, community-based organizations to document forest abuses and effectively advocate for solutions
- Support community monitoring projects through strategic partnerships, such as the Veeduría Forestal in Peru
- Improve the flow of information between community monitors and enforcement officials, advocates, journalists, or companies seeking to reduce forest crimes and ensure legal trade