'Cut and Run' is a project where DanWatch investigates Danish municipal procurement of timber from unsustainable logging in Africa's Congo basin.

Few people know that wood used for benches, docks and outdoor playgrounds probably came from tropical forests. Nor do they know about what consequences of the poor forest management where the wood came from.

Tropical wood is more durable than wood types from our own latitudes such as oak, beech and pine, and therefore it is used mainly for outdoor wood products. At the same time it has an exotic look, with its reddish, orange or dark shades. Therefore, tropical wood has become popular around the world, including in Europe and in Denmark.

Part of the wood, however, comes from tropical forests that are illegally logged. The wood is shipped through shady transactions to countries such as Denmark and the rest of Europe. Here it may end as a park bench, window frame, kitchen table, garden furniture or parquet floor at your workplace or in public spaces. Uncontrolled logging threatens the few remaining large forest areas in Asia, South America and Africa with extinction, which has huge consequences for the people who live in and depend on the rainforests.

'Cut and Run' looks into tropical timber from the harvesting in the Congo Basin rainforest to the end-use in Denmark. The study documents the consequences of the logging in the Congo Basin - the world's second largest rainforest located in central Africa.