Brazil shuts illegal timber schemes, sheds light on Amazon logging

Selective Insurance

21/12/2021 18:00

By Jake Spring
    BRASILIA, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Brazilian environmental agents
this week shut down schemes involving hundreds of companies the
agents said were covering up illegal logging in the Amazon
rainforest, according to government documents reviewed by
Reuters.
    The operation conducted by the main federal environmental
enforcement agency Ibama provides a rare glimpse into how
illegally cut Amazon wood is inserted into legal timber supply
chains, using shell companies and faking shipments.
    The enforcement operation is one of the most complete ever
conducted by the environmental agency, because it caught so many
of the people hiding behind or doing business with the shell
companies, one Ibama agent told Reuters.
    Ibama identified more than 220 companies and 21 logging
concessions involved in various schemes disguising the origin of
illegal wood, according to the documents seen by Reuters.
    The environmental agency will place embargoes on the
companies this week to prevent them from selling wood and will
hand out more than 50 million reais ($8.76 million) in fines,
the documents said. 
    Ibama has also passed on the findings to public prosecutors
and police for further criminal investigation, the documents
said.
    Ibama did not respond to a request for comment.
    The agency can issue administrative penalties like fines and
embargoes but cannot make arrests or issue criminal charges. The
companies and people involved can appeal the decisions with
Ibama.
    Under President Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's Amazon
deforestation in 2021 surged to the highest level in 15 years https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-deforestation-data-shows-22-annual-jump-clearing-amazon-2021-11-18,
 according to official government statistics. 
    Bolsonaro has rolled back environmental protections and
sought to introduce more mining and farming to the Amazon,
saying it is needed to alleviate poverty.
    Brazil permits legal logging, handing out a limited number
of concessions that allow only a proportion of trees to be cut
in a specific area, and sets quotas capping the harvest. 
    Those quotas are given out as credits that then accompany
the wood as it is sold and resold, certifying its legal origins
until it is made into a "finished product" like furniture or
flooring.
    But under the schemes, companies were selling the credits
without the wood, the documents said.
    Buyers would then attach the woodless credits to illegally
sourced wood with origins such as protected nature reserves or
tribal lands.
    In some cases, the companies involved were shell companies
that only existed on paper in order to funnel the credits, which
could change hands many times before being used, the documents
said.
    The scheme involved more than 102,000 cubic meters of
illegally cut wood from Para, Rondonia and Mato Grosso states.
That amount represents the harvest of about 97 square kilometers
of forest, an area larger than Manhattan, which still pales in
comparison to more than 13,000 square kilometers of
deforestation officially recorded in the 12 months through July.
    "That's a drop in the ocean," said Raoni Rajao, a land use
expert at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, when asked
about the discovery.
    The Ibama operation provides an example of the most common
way which illegal loggers sell their wood into the legal system,
according to Rajao. 
    "It's certainly very widespread," he said. 
    Most of the illegally harvested wood was sold into Brazil's
domestic market for a variety of uses, said the Ibama agent, on
condition of anonymity.
    The final manufacturer or consumer generally has no way of
knowing the wood is illegal as the timber appears to be
legitimate in the government system, the agent said. Therefore,
they cannot be held liable, the person said.
    Selective logging to extract valuable timber is often the
first step in deforestation, with the remaining forest then
burned to clear land for agriculture.
    
    
($1 = 5.7052 reais)

 (Reporting by Jake Spring; Editing by David Gregorio)
 ((jake.spring@thomsonreuters.com; +55 61 99653-2429; Reuters
Messaging: jake.spring.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net / Twitter:
https://twitter.com/jakespring))