Illegal Timber Trade as a Transnational Crime

UNEP-Interpol’s report estimated Illegal timber trade accounted for 51-152 billion annually. Considering its lucrative nature, illegal timber trade needs to be perceived as a transnational crime and measures to tackle the crime shall be driven by international community, instead of being considered as domestic issues of the countries afflicted. Moreover, illegal deforestation is pervasive in tropical countries like Indonesia because corruptions and limited resources hinder the effective operation of laws. External measures are defined as measures under existing international regimes which addresses transnational nature of illegal timber trade, such as multilateral environmental agreements and bilateral free trade agreements. Hence, many timber consumer countries like the US and the EU continuously improve its deforestation policies and laws which have certain implications toward producer countries like Indonesia. This article proposes a detailed review on these external measures and identify room for improvements to catalyze strategic enforcement efforts in Indonesia. The overarching idea of this article is to borrow foreign influence and enforcement power of developed countries to tackle illegal logging in Indonesia.