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The woodlands of Albania once covered nearly half of the country. In these past 25 years, however, reports estimate a 20% loss to the country’s forest cover. Albania’s forestry sector is plagued by uncontrolled logging, a sprawling informal economy, and weak regulatory enforcement. The collapse of state control in the 1990s opened the floodgates to illicit timber harvesting. Investigations by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network found that in 2011 alone, approximately 1.3 million cubic meters of treeswere felled illegally, often with the tacit approval of corrupt officials. and evading taxation and regulation. Official wood production statistics do not match actual consumption.
In 2016, the Albanian government imposed a nationwide logging moratorium. Law No. 5/2016 banned commercial logging in both public and private forests for the following decade, with limited exceptions for community firewood and forest health interventions. Timber exports were also outlawed. However, as time passed, the moratorium limitations became hard to ignore. Illegal logging had not ceased, it had adapted. Loggers moved deeper into remote areas, operated at night, and refined their methods to avoid detection.
The 2016 moratorium was accompanied by a major institutional shift: the transfer of forest management responsibilities from central authorities to Albania’s 61 municipalities, intended to bring governance closer to local communities, allowing for better oversight and accountability. In practice, however, it exposed severe capacity gaps . Many municipalities were ill-equipped to manage vast forested areas. As of 2023, 33 out of 61 municipalities had no forest management or reforestation plans in place.
Experiences of neighboring countries of North Macedonia, Bosnia Herzogovina and Italy are cited.
Key Resources
Methodology
Data Tools
Click here to access the Global Illegal Logging and Associated Trade (ILAT) Risk assessment tool and to download the Forest Trends User Guide describing the functionality of the ILAT Risk Data Tool.
Click here to access the Cattle Data Tool.
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