Research trend: Bringing the private to the public: Private actors in timber legality systems

Illegal logging and trade are one of the most important issues in world politics, strongly connected with deforestation and forest degradation, especially in developing countries with tropical forests. As a result, many different international policies designed to tackle these issues have been developed over the years, led both by state and non-state actors. Although the role of state actors in certification mechanisms has been previously analyzed, the response of non-state forest certification actors to potentially competitive systems of legality has not yet been analyzed. The case of Argentina presented in this paper shows how a coalition between international actors such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and land owners, with great power in the country, gathered through forestry associations have managed to create a timber legality verification mechanism, even with financing from the national state. In this case, the state gives up its regulatory power and the possibility of increasing its institutional capacities vis-a-vis private actors. Addressing the response of private certification actors to legality mechanisms will allow for important and in-depths insights into the relationship between state and non-state actors and potential future joint mechanisms designed to address illegal logging and deforestation.