Amid the chaos of the brutal military coup in Myanmar and despite previous crackdowns on illegal timber trafficking over its border with China, EIA has established that a major new criminal syndicate is operating the trade
Details are emerging from local media in China of an unprecedented enforcement operation in the country’s Yunnan Province against smuggling of precious timber from neighbouring Myanmar
Monitoring of key crossing points along the Myanmar-China border by EIA reveals a sharp downturn in the volume of illegal timber smuggled between the two countries in the past six months since we released the report Organised Chaos, documenting surging illicit trade in logs via the land border between Myanmar and China
The EIA team which launched the new Forest Campaign report Organised Chaos: The illicit overland timber trade between Myanmar and China in Beijing met in Yangon, Myanmar with civil society groups, media, activists and representatives of international institutions such as the EU and DFID
The report 'Organised Chaos' and its accompanying film expose the scale, methods and key named actors who organise the growing illegal timber trade into China that is wreaking chaos in the forests of Myanmar.
Based on extensive undercover investigations into trade in China and Myanmar, this report exposes key actors and systemic corruption which facilitate trade in stolen timber. In Myanmar, Chinese businesses pay in gold bars for the rights to log entire mountains, corruption allows the timber to pass through checkpoints