Illegal timber trade from Brazil and the need for robust due diligence
At the 12th BRICS Summit, held via video conference on the 17th November 2020, the Brazilian government “threatened to disclose” that “Europeans have purchased illegal timber from Brazil during 2017”.
Indeed, this is true.
Recent analysis by BVRio concluded that a high percentage of Brazilian hardwoods, exported to EU member states and the USA in 2016-2017, had a very high risk of illegality. The study was based on BVRio’s Timber Due Diligence systems, that uses big data analysis and satellite imagery and is able to able to identify the risk of irregularities in 99% of cases.
