17 data, accessed November 2009). While Gabon’s forests are made up of between 300400 species, one – Okoumé – dominates. Around 70-80 percent of its forests contain Okoumé, and this species only exists in comparatively smaller volumes in parts of Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, and the Republic of the Congo (ITTO, 2006; UNEP and WCMC). Okoumé is particularly favored due to its easy peeling quality as when fresh it can be peeled without prior steaming. Between 1987 and 1996, more than 70 percent of log exports were Okoumé (Collomb et al., 2000), but since then this proportion has fallen to around half of total exports (SEPBG, 2009).

Gabon’s timber value chain is shown in Figure 10. A small proportion of harvested trees is converted into finished products which are consumed domestically (c). But the overwhelming bulk is exported either directly as logs (a), or as sawnwood (b.i), veneer sheets (b.ii) or plywood (b.iii). A very small proportion of timber is used to manufacture railway sleepers both for domestic consumption and export.

Until very recently, Gabon’s timber sector was unregulated and out of the political focus. But with the growth of environmental concerns about climate change and mounting domestic economic problems, the timber industry has become a subject of increasing regulation, both within and outside Gabon. In the light of decreasing oil production and following pressure from external donors that Gabon regulate this key resource to use it as a primary driver of industrial diversification, the state introduced a sector program for forests, fisheries, and the environment (Programme Sectoriel Forêt, Pêche et Environnement), involving major reforms of the forestry sector (Leigh and Olters, 2006; Söderling, 2006; Wunder, 2003). This included the abolition of the state-owned export monopoly (SNBG) and the introduction of a new legislative framework, the Forestry Code, in 2001. The overall focus shifted from raw material extraction towards the industrialization of the forestry sector through increasing domestic processing of sustainably-managed forests (Methot and Ndongou, 2009). Inter alia, the Forestry Code involves:

- The re-design of the concessionary allocation system using a closed auction system to increase transparency

- The introduction of new types of concessions, with two types of commercial concessions each with a total maximum surface area and a minimum duration of exploitation

- The reform of the tax system to stimulate local processing capacities, and to promote resource transfers to rural populations

- The introduction of local processing requirements to stimulate the processing of at least 75 percent of wood before exporting by January 2012

- Production quotas are assigned to individual companies and tied to the type of concession.

The setting of explicit targets to deepen processing built on the trajectories of a few large European-owned companies, which had established processing plants to manufacture primary processed wood products during the 1990s. Complemented by the requirements of the 2001 Forestry Code to process logs domestically, this has led to a rapid increase in Gabon’s production of sawnwood, veneer sheets and plywood (Figure 11). Nevertheless, in 2007 the major share of Gabon’s timber (87 percent) was exported as raw logs, and on current trends there is little hope of meeting the Forestry Code objective of 75 percent domestic raw material processing by 2012.