The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an independent campaigning organisation, is calling on the EU to ban trade in “stolen” timber and not use the recession as “an excuse for weak regulation”.
EIA’s comments follow a “State of the World’s Forests 2009” report by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture (FAO), which raised concerns that the global economic downturn would harm forests, despite the predicted reduction in demand for timber.
“Contraction of formal economic sectors often opens opportunities for expansion of the informal sector and could lead to more illegal logging,” said the report.
