Timber trafficking, a transnational activity

This work shows how wood trafficking is structured to become a transnational business that intensifies the interactive dynamics on both sides of the borders between the Gambia and Upper and Middle Casamance. Using a strongly ethnographically oriented approach, this study was based on an immersion in trafficking networks and an extended stay in the communes of Tankon, Bourouco, Kéréwane and Pata, which are affected by the trafficking of timber by hosting major trafficking routes and highly exposed forests. How has timber trafficking become a transnational business in a politically stable area? To answer this question, this study shows that a set of factors encourages trafficking that has significant consequences for Casamance and its forests. Indeed, timber trafficking is based on a solid structure with local and transnational actors linked by money coming from the Chinese through Gambia and timber trafficked from Casamance. Timber trafficking relies on a pre-existing trafficking system to intensify cross-border dynamics.