But at the heart of this story – and Bakurov's transformation from two-bit nobody into a multimillionaire politician – is one key trick. Russia) for two specific Ikea products (the Latt table and Mala easel), but pointedly did not deny using Russian wood from Bakurov's company for other products which they supply to the Swedish giant. I guess 'kids furniture' drives the views. But by 2019, his allies were starting to suffer the consequences of colluding with businessmen such as him, and his position was beginning to look increasingly precarious. Earthsight claims the timber was felled contrary to permits and allowed practices. Earthsight debunked the corporate spin, point by point. Rushing to get ahead of the coming scandal after being alerted to our findings in advance, Ikea on 29 June 2021 announced a raft of new steps clearly triggered by them. Asked whether better enforcement of these laws could drive Russian authorities to take a stronger stance and thereby protect Russia's forests, Alexey Yaroshenko of Greenpeace Russia was categorical. Forest Certification's auditors appeared not to notice either. Read full terms. Such sanitary logging also occurred at a time known as the 'silence period' when it is banned so that animals can breed. These were not small offences. The charge sheet is stark: court decisions have ruled that amendments to three of the five FSC-certified Vilis leases were illegal; field evidence confirms the unjustified and illegal nature of this sanitary logging by showing that the forest concerned was healthy; in one of the FSC-certified leases, satellite images show illegal logging continued even after the courts invalidated the lease amendment concerned; the illegal sanitary clearcuts within the Vilis concessions included some of the largest areas within the wider Bakurov estate in protective zones along the edges of lakes and rivers, areas especially important for the spawning of fish and prevention of erosion and pollution of water sources; in 2019, 86 per cent of all timber cut within the Vilis concession certified by FSC came from illegal sanitary harvesting in protected forests; and more than 40 per cent of trees illegally harvested in protected forests across the Bakurov empire over the last decade were cut in Vilis's certified land leases. Earthsight's analysis of satellite images shows that illegal deforestation continued in protected forests controlled by Bakurov's companies even after their appeals failed. The only way any such logging could have been even remotely legal was if it were being carried out for reasons of forest ill-health. It must then publish a summary of the results, and explain how it will address them. FSC audits failed to mention flagrant illegal logging that had been documented by Russian authorities and covered in the local press, the report said. Sutarindo, we learned, also ships children's furniture to two of Ikea's biggest competitors in the United States. The proverbial elephant in the room in the Bakurov case was far larger. Of this area, 30 per cent is in Siberia or the Russian Far East. The man in charge of Khabarovsk's forest industry during the height of the scam was found guilty of abuse of office in 2020 as a result. The scandal regarding this illegal sanitary logging by Bakurov's companies, including Vilis, has also been repeatedly mentioned in the local press since 2015. Importantly, however, the rules don't require the auditors to check whether the company being certified has been honest in its declaration. ", Russia lost 69.5 million hectares of tree cover since 2001. The Ikea products Earthsight traced were all made with FSC-certified wood. Investigative investigate organisation Earthsight has introduced a report that promises the pine identified in IKEA’s Sundvik children’s furnishings range comes from trees illegally felled in secured Russian forests. A slew of companies are purchasing wood from a supplier owned by the wife of Ukraine’s former forestry chief, even though a criminal case against the couple is ongoing. They said that if companies in Europe were to comply with its law on legality of wood imports, they would have to do a lot more, and if they could not, they must halt purchases. Source: Ikea. It is characterised by broad valleys and rolling hills carpeted with dense forests of larch, pine, fir, spruce, aspen and birch. The global green label did, however, issue a general statement on its activities in Russia. They went on to say that they were investigating our allegations and "continue to insist on procuring legally sourced wood". Ikea declared an immediate ban the use of sanitary-felled wood from the Russian Far East and Siberia after Earthsight alerted the retailer to our findings. Image: Ezhiki / Wikimedia Commons (licensed under CC BY 2.5). 05.07.2017An investigation exposing how European supermarkets are helping drive the most rapid tropical deforestation anywhere in the world. But it is a disappointingly low target, considering that 12 per cent of the firm's wood is already from recycled sources. In response, FSC states it is fully aware of the issues in Ukraine, and insists that whenever illicit acts are identified or reported they are investigated. Ongoing for many years, Earthsight estimates that shoppers have been purchasing an IKEA product containing Russian lumber somewhere on earth every two minutes. The wood is already laundered before the tree hits the ground. The problems started the moment the certification was first approved. According to Ganesh, this equates to “shoppers purchasing an Ikea product containing the suspect Russian timber somewhere on earth every two minutes.”. In 2019, Irkutsk's top forestry official, Sergey Sheverda, was arrested for facilitating the illegal felling on false sanitary grounds of woodland in a nature reserve. As Earthsight documented in an explosive report, in 2019 Russia's domestic spy agency blew the lid on the case, arresting the timber baron involved. The peak year for sanitary logging in Irkutsk was 2018, at which point Bakurov's firms were responsible for about six per cent of the total amount of such cutting in the province. It is the product of nine months’ reporting across the Southeast Asian country, interviewing fixers, middlemen, lawyers and companies involved in land deals, and those most affected by them. Nearly 9,400 hectares of forest was declared to FSC as having been logged over the period – an area 48 per cent larger than the remote-sensing data's estimate of 6,300 hectares. COP26 has brought many companies' commitments and commitments in addressing climate change. Earthsight’s 18-­month-­long investigation has found that Ikea is selling beech chairs made from wood which was illegally felled in the forests of the Ukrainian Carpathians, home to endangered lynx and bear.Illegal wood has been used to make a number of well­-known products, including its iconic folding, slatted Terje chair and best­-selling Ingolf dining chair. Irkutsk territory's arbitration court database lists eleven such cases initiated by regional prosecutors between 2014 and 2020 against the five Bakurov firms. Ikea is likely to have sold children's furniture for years made from wood linked to illegal logging in Russia. In recent hours, the prestige ofIkea is widely questioned. By a conservative estimate, one Ikea product containing this wood is sold somewhere on earth every two minutes. In spite of the global economic shock caused by the Covid-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, this trade with the EU continued to grow last year, hitting a record high of 14.1 million tonnes, – an amount which required the felling of, "It may not be as high profile as Amazonian or Indonesian rainforest but the Russian boreal forest is hugely important". Read here: https://www.earthsight.org.uk/news/analysis-grand-theft-chaco-ii-the-vice-continues To get around the issues, many of these Ikea suppliers have made their own investments in Russia, including in Irkutsk province. We travelled hundreds of miles across Ukraine to interview government officials, … But in many places, the clearances went right down to the shoreline. Auditors, it added, therefore relied primarily on official documents and consultations with stakeholders to assess whether such logging was legal. Companies abuse these rules to allow them to cut far more trees, in a far more destructive manner, than their logging licenses allow (see 'Russia's problem of illegal sanitary logging'). A similar scene emerged later that summer, when satellite images captured logging at a Vilis forestry site nearly 45 miles away. First came the downfall of the Irkutsk forest minister Sergey Sheverda in early June 2019, for his role in illegally approving sanitary felling of healthy forest in a nature reserve. Exactly why is not clear, because the findings of the audit are kept secret. Ikea's '2030 Forest Agenda' was a tacit admission that FSC certification alone cannot ensure its wood consumption is sustainable. A new Earthsight investigation released today exposes how Siberia's climate-critical forests have been illegally logged and the timber greenwashed to make popular Ikea products: # IkeaHouseofHorrors Satellite images taken from December 2019 to February 2020 show trees were felled in DeepForest lease 91-295, along the Ilim River, after Irkutsk Region's forest ministry banned logging during an arbitration dispute over the land. However, they were doubly illegal because the available evidence indicates that the forests concerned were not unhealthy at all. In early 2021, the European Union did make one ground-breaking move in response to Earthsight's reports about Ukraine. The certification body concerned, meanwhile, threw the blame right back. Irkutsk Oblast (red) in Russia. The gap between EUTR requirements and how they are enforced has caused a surge in demand for FSC certificates, including in corrupt countries like Russia and Ukraine. His political career, so far, has proved him right. It also announced plans to make greater use of technology to verify its wood supplies. Razing forests without anyone noticing used to be easy in Irkutsk province. Its relentless, and growing, demand for cheap, sustainable wood encourages its business partners to cut corners to keep up supplies. Floating log rafts near industrial centre in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia © Earthsight. Earthsight holds FSC largely responsible for the logging abuses linked to Ikea and other retailers we connected to the scandal. Ikea's growing Russian wood consumption has driven a rapid increase in FSC-certified forest in the country. After more than 10 years of checks, the published reports run to a combined 234 pages. This collection of essays represents the outcome of a three year research project at the Center for Ethics of the University of Antwerp (UFSIA) which has been executed by a multi-disciplinary team of philosophers and economists. As it happens, ASI never felt Vilis was worthy of their attention, despite one of Forest Certification's auditors – quickly overruled by his superiors – describing the company as "high-risk". Ikea places the factories under huge pressure to deliver rapidly increasing volumes at bargain prices. "It's crucial in regulating global climate – its trees, soils and peat store more carbon than all tropical and temperate forests combined – and are home to many large animals like forest reindeer that are disappearing from transformed and degraded forests.". Ikea has now told Earthsight and NBC News that it has cut ties with the logging companies in the report. But the certification scheme abandoned the plan after pressure from timber industry members. One likely reason that Bakurov was able to stay ahead of the authorities longer is his powerful political and government connections. Forest fire in Siberia © Julia Petrenko / Greenpeace. It seemed Evgeny the strongman's claims about being a survivor were no idle boast. It is remote, with few roads snaking into the seemingly endless taiga. Our evidence shows that all five of Bakurov's logging firms – Vilis, Vertical-B, DeepForest, Noviy Les and Bratskwood – have systematically flouted every one of these rules. The reports also reveal that auditors were aware as early as 2010 that Vilis was conducting sanitary logging in protected forests. The Bakurov empireIn public promotions fronted by Bakurov, his group of companies is referred to under the overall brand 'ExportLes Group'. Read more. A promotional video for his firms published on YouTube in 2016 shows him brag of supplying none other than the largest wood product retailer in the world: Ikea. A new Earthsight investigation released today exposes how Siberia's climate-critical forests have been illegally logged and the timber greenwashed to make popular Ikea products: #IkeaHouseofHorrors. While the clearest route by which Bakurov's dirty wood reaches Ikea stores is via the children's furniture made by PT Karya Sutarindo in Indonesia, it is not the only one. Though in response to our finding the Indonesian company insisted that none of these exports were made with their Russian pine, if true it appears this was more by chance than by design. It also made clear that the implications went beyond Ukraine, with similar problems very likely to be found in other high-risk Ikea supplier countries like Russia. Satellite images taken from 3 June 2019 to 1 July 2019 show trees were felled in protected forests within Vertical-B lease 91-21-3, near Polyanka Bay, after the company lost an appeal against the regional arbitration court's ruling. The Earthsight report traced in detail a particular supply route via Indonesia involving children's furniture in Ikea stores, but it also suggested that wood from Bakurov's logging companies could have made its way into other Ikea products and those of other Western retailers through China and Russian suppliers. "showed no indications that illegally logged wood had entered our supply chain. Felled trunks could then be hauled down a track connected to the waterway and loaded onto transport boats. IKEA’s illegal logging ties don’t stop in Ukraine. Packed into cargo containers, the goods trundle along the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok in the Russian Far East, from where they are shipped. There could yet be other, more innocent explanations. But it is not easy to screen the real ones and those who are being Sundvik chairs from Indonesian furniture manufacturer and Ikea supplier PT Karya Sutarindo on sale in the UK, May 2021 © Earthsight. While in 2016 the Russian firm was responsible for monitoring 10 per cent of the area of FSC certified logging in its home country, by 2019 this proportion had grown to 58 per cent. In that same promo film, Bakurov claimed to supply wood to factories near the Chinese port city of Qingdao, whose main customer is Ikea. The forests form a habitat for many, a lifeline for all – and they're dying. The deals broke forestry laws by allowing an additional 689,000 cubic metres of timber to be harvested over a short period of time, far more than the roughly 90,000 cubic metres per year allowed originally (of which 40,000 cubic metres was unprofitable 'thinning' of small trees – see table above). REVEALED: The illegal Russian wood inside Ikea children’s furniture A new Earthsight investigation exposes how Siberia's climate-critical forests… Liked by Tom Elliott Join now to see all activity After the report was published, Ikea told Earthsight that it had cut ties with the logging companies in the report, newswires reported. The leases were certainly not removed because of belated action by auditors. Piled high, the logs produced would rival the Great Pyramid of Giza. Lengthy court disputes also bought Bakurov and his cronies time to drive deeper into protected forests before someone stopped them. Using undercover meetings, visits to logging sites, satellite imagery analysis and scrutiny of official documents, court records and customs data, we traced wood furniture on sale in Ikea stores around the world to forests in remote Siberia. What they missed confounds belief. In its statement, FSC also stressed that it had been working to study and seek to better address the problem of illegal sanitary logging (for more details, read FSC's full response to Earthsight here). Satellite images taken from 2 to 15 August 2019 show trees were felled in protected forests within Vilis lease 91-1/9, by the Angara River, after the company lost an appeal against the regional arbitration court's ruling. He could have rested on his laurels, sat back and enjoyed his new-found wealth. The US is the leading destination for wood product exports from China, valued at more than $9 billion in 2018. Ikea's consumption of Russian wood has skyrocketed in recent years. Thanks to them, it turns out, a trail leads from Bakurov's remote Siberian forest destruction to children's bedrooms all over the world. Immediate actions it could take include forcing auditors to make routine use of satellite imagery, court documents and media reports when conducting audits, and to clarify partial certification rules to avoid someone like Bakurov running roughshod over them. Forests were turned into tinderboxes by the illegal abandonment of huge volumes of logging residues. This is supported by studies such as one by WWF in 2019, which found that 96 per cent of the planned sanitary felling sites it examined had been allocated improperly. Operating 422 stores in more than 50 countries, Ikea reported retail sales of more than $41 billion last year. The findings show that governments in the US and Europe must enforce timber import laws more rigorously to address their roles in driving global deforestation. Even Russian president Vladimir Putin decried the "very corrupt" forestry industry during his annual news conference in 2019. such as a record $13 million fine issued for illegal Russian oak flooring found in the US, an EU-commissioned review of the legislation, Guidance on EUTR made on the bloc's behalf. Five leading Ukrainian civil society groups sought to address this inadequate response in an open letter demanding that Ukrainian authorities implement sweeping reforms to the country's forest sector and calling on the EU to support those changes. The Swedish retail giant's role driving deforestation in Ukraine was mentioned in a debate at the European Parliament and more than 200,000 people signed an online petition demanding the brand take actions including setting targets to reduce its wood use and halting timber supplies from virgin forests. Wood products make up three-fifths of the company's sales. Satellite images taken from 2013 to 2020 show logging in Vilis forest lease 7-09 near the shores of rivers and the Bratsk reservoir. Earthsight claims the timber was felled contrary to permits and allowed practices. His companies left a long paper trail laying bare widespread illegal logging, including in protected forests. Uncertified forests are not subject to the full list of FSC's checks, but auditors are expected to carry out some basic due diligence on logging within them like ensuring it meets minimum legal standards. Behold the Black Caiman is Lucas Bessire’s intimate chronicle of the journey of this small group of Ayoreo people, the terrifying new world they now face, and the precarious lives they are piecing together against the backdrop of soul ... Companies merely have to show they have the necessary safeguards in place to keep certified and uncertified wood separate, and not that they actually use them. But fundamental flaws in how it works have led it astray. More than a quarter of the net forest loss seen in Russia in the first 12 years of this century occurred in Irkutsk. 13.10.2021 One year on, failed response from Paraguayan government and leather industry to the scandal demonstrates urgent need for new laws. Often, the most revealing details of what is really happening in a forest come not in the form of what these reports say, but what they miss out. To the south stretch the vast empty deserts of Mongolia. He points out that "legal" or licensed felling often skirts the law, takes place on false or questionable grounds and results in the same devastating environmental impact as this unauthorised logging, but is far more common. This book looks at this largely uninvestigated issue through case studies in the Eastern DRC, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda: here the loss of land often represents the loss of people's livelihoods in these areas of extreme land scarcity in ... Industry experts note that buyers of children's furniture are also more likely to be concerned about sustainability. But before Neil can learn more, she vanishes. Intrigued, he tries to find her—a search that will lead him down the rabbit hole, into an eerily familiar place where he will discover a dark and disturbing secret about the Way Inn. Earthsight's findings represent just the tip of the iceberg with respect to the presence of illegal Russian wood in both Europe and Ikea. In the five years to 2019, Russia represented 62 per cent of net global growth in FSC's certified forest area. With the sanitary logging scam providing an increasingly difficult route to riches, Russia's illegal timber barons have hit on a new scheme: Priority Investment Projects (PIPs). Prosecutors alleged that his company wood processing facility was a sham, used to cover the illegal harvesting of some 600,000 cubic metres of logs. Pine, the main material in these products, does not grow in Indonesia. Ikea accused of sourcing illegal Russian timber | Woodworking Network Skip to main content 28.11.2018The story behind the single biggest threat to the rainforests of Indonesia. Like their Indonesian counterpart, they are technically independent but utterly reliant on the Swedish cash cow. equivalent to 14 per cent of its production forest (woodland in which logging is allowed). As a result, auditors were under no obligation to monitor whether they were engaged in criminal activity, despite plentiful clues that they formed part of a larger whole. Ikea has three sawmills in Russia, churning out furniture and furniture parts. Earthsight's research suggests uncertified timber from Bakurov's forest estate was very likely laundered into FSC supply chains. She went on to say that the Ikea manufacturers her company supplies include one based in Southeast Asia, but would not provide its name. An area of Russian forest the size of France is now FSC certified – equivalent to 14 per cent of its production forest (woodland in which logging is allowed). Wood products make up three-fifths of the company's sales. But he exploited it like no-one else, and proved more adept at staying ahead of the law. Exactly why is not clear, because the findings of the audit are kept secret. Ikea has now told Earthsight and NBC News that it has cut ties with the logging companies in the report. ASI did carry out a general audit of Forest Certification's headquarters in September 2020, but gave the certification body a clean bill of health. Ikea also claimed that our assessment that the company had failed to address illegalities in Ukraine is "incorrect", though as evidence presented only a claim that the firm had continued to "work to address the issue of conflicting legislation" in the country. Our findings provide further proof that this trust is wildly misplaced. Our report found the world's largest furniture retailer was a major buyer of illegal wood from the once-dense Carpathian Mountains in southwest Ukraine, home to some of Europe's rarest wildlife. He alleged that the leadership of the local forest authorities were complicit, including in the deliberate falsification of forest pathological inspection reports. להיכנס לחשבון שלך. åldersbeständig plast montering. By 2019 the proportion had risen to 9 per cent. FSC does have powers to spot timber laundering and stop it from happening, but, in a classic Catch-22, will only use them if there is evidence that timber laundering is already taking place. This would effectively make it exempt from supply chain checks, if not in principle then in practice. Forest Certification's auditors appeared not to notice either. Uspekh wood processing factory in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. The continued success of the children's furniture market has seen big brands signing licensing deals with top fashion designers and celebrities like Hollywood actress Drew Barrymore. But that would be to underestimate Evgeny Bakurov. The discrepancy means that 535,000 cubic metres of wood, a volume six times as big as London's Royal Albert Hall and representing a third (35 per cent) of the 1,539,057 cubic metres Vilis declared to have harvested over the period (excluding wood obtained through thinning), could not be accounted for by the observed activities. NGO Report: Ikea is Using Wood Illegally Logged in Ukraine Ikea’s iconic Terje and Ingolf chairs are made of wood that has been illegally logged in one of the last large forests in Europe, a report released by UK non-profit Earthsight claims.

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