Illegal timber trade : analysing the effectiveness of European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR) in the UK

Despite the decades of concern and efforts, the forest cover of the world is more endangered than ever. Failure of international dialogues since the Rio Summit in 1992 is an indication that inclusive coordinated approach with strict laws and policies needed to protect global forest cover and to fight against the transnational issue of illegal logging. The emerging transnational timber legality assurance regime and the experimentalist form of governance in the form of the European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR) aimed at controlling trade in illegally logged wood and wood products into the EU. This research critically examines the mechanisms of EUTR and performance of its legal instruments in eradicating the illegal timber from the EU market. This research helps in identifying the operational difficulties of implementing this regulation in the UK as the UK is one of the major importers of wood products from countries where illegal logging of timber is a massive issue. To achieve the research objectives, the black letter approach and empirical research method have been considered to analyse the potential of EUTR. The experimentalist governance theory to develop analytical framework and the empirical study with stakeholders including the timber industry in the UK, EUTR enforcement agency and research organisations including the environmental Non-government organisations are a significant part of this thesis. The experience and opinions of different stakeholders on EUTR components, collected through questionnaire and semi-structured interviews, have been analysed qualitatively by using the computer software NVIVO 11 to conclude. This research shows that views of the stakeholders are very diverse and there are noticeable differences in opinions from the same category of stakeholders. The study finds that although EUTR is considered as a welcome initiative by most of the stakeholders, they are also of the opinion that EUTR has weaknesses which make it difficult to completely control illegal timber and timber products being placed in the UK market. From the data analysis, it is quite evident that implementation and enforcement of timber regulation, narrow product scope, ambiguous concept of monitoring organisation, lack of transparency from competent authority and coherent approach across EU, technical issues within due diligence system are some of the significant challenges that affect the potential of EUTR in combating illegal timber trade