Abstract
Illegal timber trade is a global issue; highly prized rosewoods are mainly sourced from Africa and Madagascar. In Madagascar, where corruption and political instability are rampant, forest regulations have been issued during the last 15 years to facilitate illegal rosewood exploitation. The current situation precludes non-detriment findings (under which the exporting State ensures that a proposed action will not be detrimental to the survival of a species) intended to enable sustainable use of standing populations, but the Malagasy government, backed by the World Bank, is promoting the sale of massive stocks of confiscated precious wood. We argue that allowing the sale of these stocks would encourage further illegal harvest. No suitable tools are available to identify, control or monitor standing trees or cut timber, and there are substantial knowledge gaps regarding species limits, population sizes, distribution and abundance. When combined with taxonomic confusion and weak governance, these factors necessitate uplifting all of Madagascar's precious woods to Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
Highlights
Since the early 2000s, the demand in China for high-value rosewood has become a serious threat to tropical forests (Innes, 2010)
Illegal timber trade is a global issue; highly prized rosewoods are mainly sourced from Africa and Madagascar
The current situation precludes non-detriment findings intended to enable sustainable use of standing populations, but the Malagasy government, backed by the World Bank, is promoting the sale of massive stocks of confiscated precious wood
Summary
Since the early 2000s, the demand in China for high-value rosewood has become a serious threat to tropical forests (Innes, 2010). Supported by the World Bank, the Malagasy government recently retained a consultant to develop a “Stockpile Verification Mechanism and Business Plan” (Mason et al, 2016), which was discussed at a multi-stakeholder meeting in June 2018 and subsequently revised for presentation to the 70th meeting of the Standing Committee in October 2018 During this meeting, participants acknowledged some improvements in the latest draft of this plan, but the inclusion of a provision to provide US$7 million in compensation to traffickers in possession of felled rosewood stocks was strongly opposed by many CITES Parties as well as by environmental NGOs. During this meeting, participants acknowledged some improvements in the latest draft of this plan, but the inclusion of a provision to provide US$7 million in compensation to traffickers in possession of felled rosewood stocks was strongly opposed by many CITES Parties as well as by environmental NGOs Critics felt that such a provision would be dangerous in the Malagasy context because it would reward those breaking the law and would risk triggering more illegal rosewood cutting. The proposed auctioning of stocks would increase the risk of further illegal sourcing of precious woods (Table 1)
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