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As global leaders point fingers at the developing world to fight illegal logging, they’re letting their own corporate criminials off the hook.

Among other wishy-washy non-commitments made by world leaders during the G8 last week, came this little-noticed vow by the whitehouse:

[The United States will] Combat illegal logging by working with poor countries struggling to enforce their own forest management laws to prevent harm to ecosystems and land use changes that are a factor in climate change.

Essentially, the messsage is that “we’ll just let those poor countries work it out.”

Now, as most people think about illegal logging (and most don’t, of course), the message probably makes some sense. Illegal loggers are easy to think of as clandestine criminals operating deep in misty jungles. Under this logic, all that’s needed is to root out a few bad apples, and the problem goes away.

Increasingly, though, we’re finding that illegal logging is also conducted by some of the worlds largest and most respected corporations in broad daylight, and in our own back yard. A recent study in Russia, for example, shows that illegal logging has nearly doubled within the last decade–most if not all at the hands of the country’s largest companies. This week, our first “Clearcut Case Study” profiles illegal logging by Weyerhaeuser in the sensitive Boreal forest of northern Saskatchewan.

These types of operations won’t be solved by “…working with poor countries struggling to enforce their own forest management laws” they’ll be solved by cracking down on corporate crime at home.

Chances are that’s not going to happen any time soon. Why? Because unlike small bands of poachers, multinational corporations have the political access and economic influence needed to evade accountability. In each of these cases, corporations responsible for the lawless behavior escaped unscathed. In the case of Weyerhaeuser, Provincial authorities are now considering retroactive moves to relieve the company from paying any penalty at all.

It’s this same type of access and influence that’s driving (or driving back) the illegal logging agenda at the G8. Early on, leaked documents from inside the State Department revealed that the US would oppose UK proposals to restrict the international trade in illegally logged wood. Despite pledges of support from Austrailia and Japan, the US (with a little help from Russia–surprise, surprise) was able to kill the proposal in favor of “…each country acting where it can contribute most effectively”.