Ancient rosewood trees play a vital role in ecosystems worldwide, but their red timber is highly priced. The surge in Asian demand for rosewood furniture helped drive an international ban on the rosewood trade in 2017 – yet in many countries, it still thrives. Governments and senior officials are often complicit, colluding with timber barons to profit financially or buying political patronage and votes with illegal permits to sell timber.

The weak enforcement of national and international regulations allows perpetrators to go unpunished, stripping communities of natural resources, destroying habitats and changing local climates. But environmental and anti-corruption activists and reporters are now exposing the devastation and holding those responsible to account. Their work is crucial to saving the last rosewoods by fuelling demands for change.

Ghana’s media won public support for a campaign to get the government to enforce the international ban on rosewood trade. An investigative report showed the environmental destruction caused by logging in protected areas, with the government tolerating key exporters. The BBC covered an Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) report into the illegal trade, implicating government officials in illegally harvesting and exporting 540,000 tons of rosewood – around 6 million trees – to China since 2012.

Logging causes localised climate change. For the first time, rainfall patterns are being altered, water systems are drying up, and storms are damaging homes and farms. Local communities where trees are lost receive little income. Yet, thanks to the media coverage, public pressure is growing for rosewood trading to end.

In 2007, Madagascar's politicians allowed the country's top timber traders to sell rosewood felled by storms, even though logging and exporting rosewood is illegal. With the World Bank's backing, the government also ran a scheme to sell thousands of stockpiled rosewood logs.

These concessions enabled timber traders to sell illegally felled logs under the cover of authorised transactions, resulting in mass deforestation. They were exposed in a 2018 report by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), supported by Transparency International Initiative Madagascar, revealing Madagascar’s government colluding with timber barons to profit from the rosewood trade.

Transparency International Initiative Madagascar, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Alliance Voahary Gasy launched an advocacy campaign demanding the government honoured its international commitments to protect rosewood trees. They gained widespread media coverage and joined NGOs and donors at a meeting with the environment minister to demand enforcement of rosewood protection.

An OCCRP investigation found that the leaseholders of land granted by the government to political elites and war veterans could make up to US$1.5 million per year selling illegally felled rosewood logs. Meanwhile, Chinese-fronted companies control the illicit trade export of timber, valued at millions of dollars. Although rosewood harvesting has been banned in Namibia since 2018 and its trading since 2019, the rules are not enforced.

Namibia's forestry ministry estimates that around 32,000 blocks of protected hardwood were sent for export between November 2018 and March 2019. At a rally before the 2019 elections, President Geingob permitted farmers to sell any harvested hardwood despite the ban. By exposing the criminal logging network and its political backers, the OCCRP is paving the way for change.

Similarly, in Zambia, rosewood is logged under the auspices of elite officials. A 2019 EIA report revealed that the country's president, his daughter, high-ranking politicians (including the minister of lands and natural resources), Zambia's army and the state-owned forestry company were allegedly involved in the illicit rosewood trade.

The EIA estimated that the banned trade generated around US$7.5 million in bribes and informal fees annually. Rosewood could have influenced elections, with the president allegedly granting logging permits to regional chiefs in exchange for votes in 2016.

Transparency International Zambia supported the EIA report's publication and campaigned to protect the remaining rosewood trees. It called for the authorities to investigate the allegations, prosecute wrongdoing, regardless of the alleged perpetrators' status, and institute a complete ban on rosewood exports.

• While laws and regulations are a key pillar of environmental protection and preventing corruption, they need adequate and consistent enforcement to work.
• Civil society coalitions and alliances are invaluable in amplifying activists' voices and driving change.
• Investigative journalism can reach new and diverse audiences, making the media an important ally in exposing corruption and environmental abuses.
• Corruption linked to forest products and other internationally traded resource commodities is often a shared responsibility across national borders. Corrupt actors seek to exploit the loopholes and governance or accountability gaps between national jurisdictions. Efforts to tackle corruption of this kind should address supply and demand factors, with financial investigations as a key tool for uncovering the problem.