Illegal logging is a global concern, associated with severe negative environmental, social and economic impacts, such as deforestation, degradation of biodiversity and loss of government revenues. Despite recent international efforts to combat illegal logging activities, the problem remains widespread. While the academic literature on the subject is extensive, little systematic research has been devoted to analysing the causes of illegal logging. Here, this knowledge gap is addressed with a cross-national assessment of factors hypothesized to impact illegal logging. The logistic regression analysis conducted in this study corroborates some widely held beliefs, but also provides some new insights on the factors that are important for whether illegal logging is likely to be a problem. It is shown that, besides physical-geographic characteristics, a number of factors relating to the level and speed of a country’s economic-institutional development are associated with illegal logging. These include gross domestic product per capita, economic growth, voice and accountability, rule of law and control of corruption. The findings also have implications for existing policies to tackle illegal logging activities.

The objective of this study is to quantify the contribution of the German forestry to climate change mitigation and to calculate the associated costs at the national level. For that, the forest and harvested wood products carbon pools are considered as well as energy and material substitution. We compare five different scenarios, each referring to an alternative level of timber harvests (due to changing rotation lengths or setting aside of forest areas). The study shows that enhancing the use of wood products at the expense of other materials, such as steel, plastic or concrete, can have a substantial impact on the overall carbon balance.

In an attempt to make a first step toward monitoring the sustainability of wood as (one of) the main element(s) of the EU biomass supply, a novel approach combining a physical accounting model with a material flow–life cycle assessment approach was used to trace the locations of origin of the wood and the associated sustainability impacts. Applying this approach to EU trade data from 2018, we found that around one-third of the wood fiber input in finished paper products consumed in the EU was imported. The main countries of origin were Brazil, the United States and Uruguay. We used Uruguay as a case study of an important country that provides wood pulp to assess the associated sustainability impacts. The results reveal synergies and trade-offs between employment, value added and environmental impacts. We highlight the need to analyze sustainability impacts in different dimensions of sustainability and consider not only territorial impacts in isolation but also from a global perspective in order to have a more holistic overview. Future extensions of the approach could include the coverage of other commodities, additional impacts along the global supply chain (e.g., post-use) and additional sustainability indicators.