Lust for 'green gold' drives Amazon destruction

International mahogany trade reeks of power, corruption and blood

Feature story - 17 October, 2002
The wood oozes glamour and prestige in the gleaming showrooms of the north. But its plunder drives the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, corruption and even murder.

Greenpeace Amazonia campainger Paulo Adario surrounded by illegal mahogany logs in the state of Para, Brazil.

The wood is mahogany, but it's also known as "green gold". For good reason. One log earns an astonishing US$ 130,000 by the time it's transformed into the solid mahogany dining tables sold at high-class stores such as Harrods of London.

With stakes so high, it's no surprise current measures to halt the illegal mahogany trade are failing. Despite Brazil's moratorium on the harvest and export of mahogany since last year, prospectors still fly hundreds of kilometres looking for isolated mahogany trees, then bulldoze illegal access roads through pristine rainforest. The over-exploited wood continues to flow into elite showrooms.

Mahogany logging is the thin edge of the wedge driving massive forest destruction throughout the heart of the Amazon.

But there are solutions. The major players in the illegal mahogany racket are well-known and relatively few. All that's lacking is international resolve to stop them.

A tale of two kings...

Just two mahogany kingpins control more than 80 percent of mahogany exports from Pará state, Brazil's largest mahogany producing region. They are behind the mahogany mafia which organises the illegal exploitation and trade in "green gold".

The mightiest, Moisés Carvalho Pereira, is said to make an astonishing US$ 1 million per day during the mahogany logging season. He is said to be aided by an even more powerful friend; the Brazilian senate's former president has been linked to the illegal mahogany trade through Moisés.

When Moisés buys logs from Kayapó Indian lands, which is illegal, the Indians are paid just US$ 30 per cubic metre. The mahogany is sold on the international market for more than 45 times that amount. Moisés uses so-called legal paperwork to cover up and launder the illegal mahogany. Local corruption and lax controls make this deception easier.

Kingpin Osmar Alves Ferreira also has a long history of involvement in illegal mahogany coming from Indian lands. In 2001 Greenpeace exposed how Ferreira opened up an illegal road into the Terra do Meio (the Middle Lands), a relatively undisturbed region sheltering jaguars, alligators, spider monkeys and other animals threatened with extinction. The road transports mahogany to a sawmill run by a frontman for Ferreira, where Greenpeace found illegally logged mahogany.

Five nations...

So where does all this illegal mahogany go? Just five countries - the US, Dominican Republic, UK, the Netherlands and Germany - import virtually all the Brazilian mahogany exported from Pará state.

In the US, which is the world's largest mahogany import market, about half of the mahogany comes though exporters connected to the two mahogany kings.

And four importers

Buyers should shun suppliers linked to illegal operations. But they don't. And just four companies - DLH Nordisk, Aljoma Lumber, J Gibson McIlvain Co Ltd and Intercontinental Hardwoods Inc - account for more than 85 percent of the mahogany trade linked to the two mahogany kings.

DLH is particularly notorious. In 2001, it bought mahogany from all five export companies linked to the two mahogany kings. DLH has also been linked to other forest crimes in central and west Africa, including buying from companies linked with arms trafficking in Liberia. The company controls half the international Brazilian mahogany market, and supplies the US, UK, the Netherlands and Germany.

And whether they know it or not, retailers are also aiding and abetting in this high level crime. They include high-class outlets like the US's Ethan Allen, Ralph Lauren and Harrods in the UK.

Hostages to deception and murder

Logging is illegal on Brazil's Indian lands, home to the nation's largest remaining mahogany reserves. Yet by 1992 mahogany logging penetrated all 15 Indian lands in Pará state.

Loggers' modus operandi is to fell the trees, then negotiate a price with the Indians.

Not surprisingly, a fair and legal contract between Indians and loggers has never been known. Once drawn into deal making, Indians like the Kayapó have found themselves in debt bondage to sawmills, forced to pay their debts with more mahogany logging.

Unknown numbers of Indians have been murdered, a result of often violent conflicts that flare up as they try to protect their land from loggers.

A step forward

Although the picture of illegal mahogany logging in the Brazilian Amazon is bleak, there is good news. Brazil extended the moratorium on the exploitation, transport and commercialisation of mahogany until February 2003. But this temporary measure is not enough. Leading mahogany experts believe that mahogany will be commercially extinct in the wild within the next two years if current trends continue.

If international trade in mahogany is not going to lead the species to commercial extinction, a rescue package to manage mahogany in a sustainable way and effective international measures to control the market are urgently needed. This kind of protection is possible through CITES (the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora)

Next month, CITES member countries will meet in Santiago, Chile and mahogany is high on the agenda. Nicaragua has submitted a proposal, on behalf of all Central America countries, to list mahogany on Appendix II of the convention. This listing would require guarantees of legal origin and proper harvest management of the species that does not threaten its survival. This would be the first step from words and good intentions towards concrete action to protect mahogany and the rainforests of Central and South America.

Yet the pressure from the industry on governments is intense. The mahogany trade is big business. The mahogany kings in Brazil stand to lose a lot of their illegal and destructive business if the CITES proposal is approved.

You can help put pressure on the Brazilian government to support the listing of Mahogany on CITES Appendix II and show the international community that the exploitation and marketing of "green gold" of the rainforest can happen without plundering the future of the Amazon or the millions of people that depend on it.

Take action!

Send a fax to President Fernando Henrique Cardoso asking him to support the listing of mahogany, but also to take a leading role in guaranteeing the proposal is approved.

Read More

Greenpeace's Partners in Mahogany Crime report