Logging and legality: state crime theory meets green criminology

Over the past decade, “crimes” against the environment have assumed, albeit falteringly, a new moral imperative. This article examines recent attempts to regulate, police, and criminalize one major environmental crime, the international trade in illicit timber, by contrasting local with global responses to the trade. The article examines issues of legality and sustainability; the role and sometimes problematic nature of civil society responses–domestic and transnational; and the impact of regulatory and state capture on the market. The focus of the article is an exploration of the interplay between the local and global in the context of a shifting moral and legal framework.