Green Carbon, Black Trade

Controlling and limiting the road transport and intake to mills provides one of the primary opportunities for limiting the total amount of logging from regions with high rates of illegal log- ging. Introducing road or timber taxes also makes illegal tim- ber less attractive from such areas. However, imposing such a tax would have to provide rewards, bounties or returns for local officers that are greater than the typical bribe paid per truck in order to be an effective incentive to enforce. Hence, identifying the level of tax or tariff to be imposed will depend upon the region, the rate of illegal logging, its value, and the bribes com- monly paid in the region. Controlling the bottlenecks, combined with road or transporta- tion tariffs dependent upon rate of deforestation and criminal activity in the region would raise the cost of illegal timber to the same cost as legal timber. This would also increase the costs for mills processing illegal wood and impact their attractiveness on the stock markets for investors.

Illegal logging bottlenecks

Wood is transported by river

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Wood is illegally logged and collected

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Mills and processing facilities far from the logging area pay more in transportation costs

Wood is transported to mills with trucks

Border crossing

Bottlenecks

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Timber aggregation point

Border crossing point Harbour for international shipping Source: Personal communication with Christian Nellemann. Mill or other wood processing facility

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