Timber Trafficking: Illicit Logging and the Global Timber Trade

This chapter examines timber trafficking as a transnational environmental crime and security threat. It refines definitions by treating illegal logging and timber trafficking as interlinked stages of a wider process, traces the evolution of the timber-legality regime and its main actors, and synthesises drivers through a means–motive–opportunity lens. It shows that timber trafficking causes environmental degradation and climate risks, revenue loss, corruption, market distortion, and pressures on local communities. Despite legality frameworks and traceability efforts, persistent opportunity structures and fragmented oversight sustain illicit flows. The conclusion argues that timber trafficking is an urgent issue within contemporary security agendas, resonating with hybrid-threat and organised-crime frames and bearing directly on alliance resilience.