world news - 15.12.2003

Auction sales to fight illegal logging.

Can the market mechanism be used to fight illegal logging and trade, while at the same time ensuring larger profit for small private forest owners? The certification company NEPCon, the latvian State Forest Service and Forest Owners Consulting Center suggest auction sales of standing stock from private forest owners. The World Bank (WB) found the idea so promising that they will provide 213,000 USD funding for setting up and testing the system.

Last week, 47 projects from 27 countries received some 6 million USD in seed money to fund creative ideas for tackling local developmental challenges at the Development Marketplace (DM) Global Competition held at the World Bank headquarters in Washington. The competition is organized every 18-24 months, the theme of this year?s Marketplace was: "Making Services Work for Poor People".

The winner projects objective is to encourage private forest owners in Latvia to conduct harvest and timber sales on a legal basis by introducing and kick-starting an auction system for selling standing stock on private forestland. According to non-official estimations, the prices paid for wood sold as standing stock at auctions are significantly higher than timber sold to illegally operating companies on the black market in Latvia.

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