[CTC] Congress shouldn't rubber-stamp trade deals with Peru

[Arthur Stamoulis]

Congress shouldn't rubber-stamp trade deals with Peru <http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/256404-congress-shouldnt-rubber-stamp-trade-deals-with-peru>

By Michael Brune
Peru contains the second-largest portion of the Amazon rainforest after Brazil. What if you found out that the wood for your new kitchen floor was illegally taken from that forest? In fact, according to an investigative documentary recently released by Al Jazeera, many consumers are unwittingly purchasing wood products that were illegally harvested in Peru and then shipped to the United States. How can we stop this outrage? For starters, the Obama administration must take steps to properly enforce both the Lacey Act and the U.S–Peru trade pact. At the same time, given the mounting evidence of illegal exports from Peru, Congress should refuse to rubber-stamp another trade pact that includes that nation—the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

It's well-documented that corruption has plagued Peru’s forestry industry for decades, with "timber mafias" using fraudulent documents to export illegally harvested timber. According to a study <http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTFINANCIALSECTOR/Resources/Illegal_Logging.pdf> by the World Bank, up to 80 percent of the timber exported from Peru has illegal origins.

Given the magnitude of this illegal timber trade, you might be surprised to learn that, since 2007, the United States has had a trade agreement with Peru that includes a detailed set of binding obligations to curb illegal logging and associated trade. Clearly, it hasn't worked. The failure to enforce violations of the U.S.–Peru free trade deal has allowed bad actors to continue flooding the U.S. market with illegally harvested wood.
In 2012, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) published a multiyear investigative report <https://eia-international.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Laundering-Machine.pdf> that documented how more than 100 illegal shipments of cedar and mahogany—laundered with false papers and approved by the Peruvian government—arrived in the U.S. between 2008 and 2010. Citing the U.S.–Peru trade pact, the EIA and the Center for International Environmental Law petitioned <http://eia-global.org/news-media/us-government-requested-to-use-free-trade-agreement-to-take-action-on-illeg> the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to investigate and to verify the legal origin of shipments from two companies. But the USTR never took action and the illegal activity continued <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ilana-solomon/new-eia-report-details-tr_b_7546686.html>.

Over the past two years, Peru’s customs and forest-management agencies have conducted their own investigations into the legality of timber exports. As a part of their latest investigation, Peruvian officials found that several shipments from a company called La Oroza had falsified documents, which claimed that the wood was legally cut from an indigenous community’s land, when in fact it had been illegally taken elsewhere. This is significant because La Oroza is owned by the same proprietors as one of the companies that the EIA had identified in 2012 as a supplier of illegally harvested timber. However, because the USTR and Peruvian officials did not act in 2012, the owners of Oroza Wood were able to continue operating under a slightly different company name and in a slightly different capacity, but still illegally.

Al Jazeera's investigation followed the illegal shipments of timber to the United States, where importers are required under the Lacey Act to ensure that their wood products are sourced legally. Violators of the Lacey Act face fines or jail time. The main American importer of La Oroza’s wood is a company called Global Plywood and Lumber, which is registered in Nevada and operates from the backroom of a volleyball training facility <http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2015/08/peru-rotten-wood-150812105020949.html> in Poway, California. No one has yet to trace where the wood imported by Global Plywood has gone, but it could be anywhere—including your floor.

On Monday, the United States Trade Representative announced a new free trade deal, the TPP <http://www.sierraclub.org/trade/trans-pacific-partnership>,  that includes the U.S., Peru, and 10 other countries. The fact that Peru is ignoring its existing trade obligations gives us little reason to believe it would make good on any environmental rules in the TPP. Instead of rubber-stamping new trade deals, Congress should wait to vote on the TPP until Peru has come into compliance with obligations in existing trade deals and until it meets new environmental obligations required to enter the TPP. Moreover, the Obama administration must fully enforce the Lacey Act to investigate and hold companies accountable for importing illegal wood.

American consumers should no longer have to worry that something as simple as replacing hardwood floors could play any role in unwittingly financing illegal logging and destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

Brune is executive director of the Sierra Club.


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