"Illegal wood from Colombia’s rainforests enters US and EU supply chains", 06 May 2025

...A new investigation by the U.S.-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) reveals that most wood for flooring and decking from Colombia’s Pacific and Amazon forests, including the protected Dipteryx odorata (cumarú or choibá tree), is exported illegally. EIA’s “Decking the Forest” report exposes a long trail of irregularities across national wood companies, illegal armed groups, and companies in the U.S., the European Union, Canada and elsewhere. The report suggests that local Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities are exploited, threatened, and left with few alternatives as their lands deteriorate under pressure from the illegal timber trade.

The EIA estimates that $24 million worth of processed timber exports between 2020 and 2023, including flooring and decking, lacked the required legal certification, citing export data from Colombian customs authorities and responses from local environmental authorities. This suggests that about 94% of such wood exports from Colombia during that period were illegal. About 20% of these exports were destined for the U.S., Canada and the EU. The report suggests that wood companies were allegedly forced to make payments to illegal armed groups in Chocó and Antioquia departments in return for those groups allowing the companies to operate. According to the EIA, only two exporting companies received certificates for decking and flooring exports during this period...

...The destruction of forests triggers a cascade of environmental damages. “It leads to droughts and river sedimentation, ultimately drying them out,” says Vianney Enrique Moya Rua, political adviser to the social pastoral diocese of Quibdó, the capital of Chocó. “It also contributes to climate change”...

“The destruction of species is displacing communities as they search for new lands,” Moya Rua says. He adds that it threatens local food supplies and “generates hunger”...

In an emailed response to Mongabay, one wood exporting company said it has temporarily stopped sourcing cumarú and is working closely with authorities to ensure traceability throughout its supply chain and to comply with all applicable environmental and forestry regulations. The company has also rejected the claims in the EIA report, stating that it has rigorously respected all the legal norms for buying, processing and exporting wood and that it maintains strict control of documents and traceability of its products...

These national companies work with local actors, including armed ones. In a region where the state is largely absent, illegal armed groups like the National Liberation Army and the Gulf Clan are often the ones in control. The report describes how such illegal armed groups forcibly charge fees for timber shipments passing through their checkpoints and for allowing timber processing operations...

In an emailed response to Mongabay, Andrés Esteban Ordóñez Perez, director of customs management at the National Tax and Customs Directorate, said his office had no record of cumarú timber exports being seized in 2024, and none so far in 2025...

Moya Rua criticizes the international community’s double standard: while foreign governments support local communities and advocate for human rights, they fail to hold their own companies accountable for illegal logging. “We don’t see foreign governments punishing companies for violating the rules,” he says...