By Angela Henshall, MAPUTO
Mozambique
Timber smuggling, estimated to be worth $23m (£18m) a year, from Mozambique’s ancient forests into China is helping to fund a brutal Islamist insurgency as well as a large criminal network in the north of the Southern African country.
This illicit trade in rosewood
is linked to the financing of Mozambique’s violent militants with links to
Islamic State in the northernmost province of Cabo Delgado, according to data
seen by the BBC from the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an NGO that
campaigns against alleged environmental crime.
Rosewood is a catch-all trade
term for a wide range of tropical hardwoods that are highly prized for luxury
furniture in China.
Mozambique’s rosewood is
protected under an international treaty, meaning only very limited trade that
does not threaten the species is allowed.
However, a four-year
undercover investigation by the EIA in both countries has revealed that poor
management of officially sanctioned forest concessions, illegal logging and
corruption among port officials is allowing the trade to expand unchecked in
insurgent controlled areas.
The revelation comes at the
same time as a significant resurgence in fighting in the north of Mozambique.
On Friday, at least 100 insurgents staged their boldest attack in three years
on the town of Macomia, which was eventually stopped by the army.
The location of the attack
confirms that the insurgency has moved its bases further south due to the
increased presence of soldiers in the north. It “has also gained enough funds
to recruit in neighbouring Nampula province further south”, according to Mozambique
analyst Joe Hanlon.
A Mozambique government report
published earlier this year and seen by our reporter - the National Risk
Assessment on Terrorism Finance Report - says al-Shebab insurgents have taken
advantage of the illicit timber trade to “fuel and finance the reproduction of
violence”.
The report says the
insurgents’ involvement in the “smuggling of fauna and flora products”,
including wood, and the “exploitation of forest and wildlife resources” is
contributing to a “very high level of fundraising” for the insurgency group. It
estimated its revenue from these activities amounted to $1.9m a month.
Given the challenge in
accessing the Cabo Delgado region it is hard to quantify the insurgents’ level
of day-to-day involvement in the timber trade but there have been reports of
firms paying a 10% protection fee to insurgent groups to carry out illegal logging
in forest areas.
Forests with valuable trees –
not just rosewood - are divided up in to chunks, or concessions. Anyone who
wants to log these areas must pay a fee to the authorities. These are typically
licensed to a Mozambican national - the middleman - and rented out to Chinese
logging firms.
Trading sources who did not want to be named estimate that 30% of the timber logged in Cabo Delgado is at high risk of coming from insurgency-occupied forests.
There are thought to be three
main forested areas in Cabo Delgado where logging and timber sales take place:
Nairoto; Muidumbe and Mueda, plus one more in Napai, in neighbouring Nampula
province.
While the Chinese authorities
have made it illegal to log rosewood in their own country, huge quantities
continue to be imported.
Rosewood is given a customs
code for hongmu (meaning red wood in Chinese) on arrival in the country, which
allows researchers to trace it.
Mozambique was China's top
African supplier of hongmu wood last year, providing over 20,000 tonnes worth
$11.7m, according to Trade Data Monitor, a commercial company that tracks
global trade.
It has overtaken other
countries like Senegal, Nigeria and Madagascar as their rosewood species have
been stripped or depleted, or laws banning exports have been more strictly
enforced.
As part of its undercover
investigation, the EIA tracked a huge rosewood shipment out of Mozambique.
Between October 2023 and March
2024, investigators traced around 300 containers of a type of rosewood known as
pau preto from the port of Beira to China.
Pau preto rosewood, which is
found in the north of Mozambique and in Tanzania, is classed as a threatened
species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list.
These 300 containers were
transporting 10,000 tonnes of the rosewood. Trader estimates value each
container at around $60,000, putting the value of the total shipment at around
$18m.
EIA undercover footage seen by
the BBC shows some of this specific shipment was also in raw log form - rather
than planks that had been processed through sawmills. This breaks Mozambique's
own 2017 law on exporting any unprocessed timber.
The containers also held
processed planks.
The rosewood is shipped thousands
of miles to Shanghai after making several stops along the way, researchers
found.
Industry sources say that typically when trees are cut down by loggers in Cabo Delgado’s forests - either at concessions operated largely by Chinese firms, or illegally beyond these boundaries – the timber is taken to be processed at sawmills around Montepuez, a large town in Cabo Delgado.
This timber from multiple
sources is then mixed up and moved from the Montepuez mills by trucks to the
ports of Pemba or Beira.
At these ports the cargo
should be inspected by Mozambican authorities and receive a permit or export
licence. But the EIA says the logs are often mis-reported or not declared at
all in customs paperwork.
Rosewood transported between
Mozambique and China is carried by two of the world’s biggest global shipping
lines, Maersk and CMA-CGM, according to the EIA investigation.
A spokesperson from Maersk
said in a statement that it is “committed to combatting illegal wildlife trade
and will not knowingly accept bookings of wildlife or wildlife products, where
such trade is contrary to CITES or otherwise illegal. We request our customers
to correctly declare the content of their cargo and we are dependent on customs
authorities to verify the declarations and certificates. Shipments can only
take place against CITES certificates and authority approval.”
The statement explained that
it is common in shipping for customers to load and seal their containers before
handing them over to the shipping line.
A CMA-CGM spokesperson said it
transports goods belonging to customers compliant with local and international
regulations and is “not responsible and has no way to control the origin of the
goods which are all shipped into sealed containers".
The spokesperson also said
that “CMA-CGM does not transport unprocessed wood anymore, and has introduced a
rule forbidding the reservation of space on board the group's vessels for
unprocessed wood leaving Mozambique”.
Deforestation in Mozambique is
continuing apace. The country is losing the equivalent of around 1,000 football
pitches of forest cover every day, according to NGO Global Forest Watch.
The trade of rosewood is
supposed to be restricted under Cites, yet it has become the most trafficked
wildlife product in the world, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs
and Crime. In terms of value, it now far out paces trade in elephant ivory and
rhino horn.
Pau preto rosewood is listed
on Cites Appendix II, for it to be exported legally the Mozambique government
must complete a thorough scientific investigation called a non-detriment
funding study (NDF) to ensure trade does not threaten its survival.
Our reporter asked the
Mozambican representative to Cites Cornelio Miguel, who works for the National
Administration of Conservation Areas, if an NDF on pau preto had ever been
carried out. He did not provide a comment.
Without this assessment, any
trade violates the international treaty. China, as a signatory, would be
breaking the treaty’s terms in accepting non-compliant imports.
Some of the Chinese trading
firms cited in the EIA report, but none were willing to comment on whether they
were being supplied with timber from Mozambique.
For environmentalists like Dr
Annah Lake Zhu from Wageningen University, this treaty can only ever be as
robust as the governments enforcing it. She believes sustainable management of
the rosewood trade needs a total rethink.
Dr Zhu says the treaty does
not halt the insatiable demand from China’s elite for hongmu furniture.
She suggests the process of
listing specific species before they are more tightly regulated may even be
driving market dynamics as it “effectively advertises upcoming shortages” and
in turn, creating scarcity.
Strengthening the law and
bringing in a more sophisticated tracing system would improve the situation.
But in practice, conserving rosewood can only work if source countries and
timber dealers make it a priority.
Mozambique's army has received
support from other African countries, including Rwanda, in fighting the
insurgents
In conflict zones such as Cabo
Delgado this looks unlikely to happen.
In many ways Cabo Delgado is
the “perfect place” for an illicit timber trade to blossom, says EIA Africa
programme manager Raphael Edou. He describes the province as a nexus of trade
routes, with a mix of lawlessness, corruption, and a desperately poor local
population.
Aside from being home to some
of the world’s most valuable trees, Cabo Delgado has other lucrative sources of
wealth within its borders, including oil, natural gas, rubies, and sapphires.
These treasures pull in huge
global investors such as the French energy firm, Total, which has built a $20bn
gas liquification plant.
Fabergé jewellery brand owner,
Gemfields Group, owns 75% of the Montepuez ruby mine in Cabo Delgado. In 2023,
its revenue was $167m.
Insurgent activity in the
province has led to one of Africa’s most significant displacement crises, with
more than a million people forced to leave their homes.
The insurgents target
civilians, carrying out massacres, beheadings, rapes and kidnappings. Houses
and whole villages have been bombed and burned.
The violence has destabilised
most of Cabo Delgado for almost a decade prompting the government to rely on
foreign troops to police the province.
The authorities are struggling
to reinforce laws designed to protect Cabo Delgado’s most vulnerable people,
let alone those designed to protect its environment and forests.
No comments:
Post a Comment