How utterly surprising !
It never ceases to amaze me how, in all these wonderfull plans thought up by all manner of well meaning folk trying to better the world, the 'human factor' is always ignored.. if money can be made there will always be someone somewhere prepared to do anything to get their hands on some of it, bugger the consequences.
It works a bit like this : legislation is issued by the governments of the world to be able to ensure that resources gathered around the world by major players are 'clean'. The method for this is inevitably a lot of paperwork and government stamps. No one is actually going to send out an armed force to a foreign country to verify if everyone is playing by the rules;
Subsequently, it becomes more difficult -at least administratively- for more or less ethically sound legitimate players to import said resources. They will therefore try and source their needs from alternative origins. This leads, especially in regions already considered to be 'offenders', to a sharp drop in legitimate demand.
At this point, all manner of of more err...mercantile oriented smaller, less visible and often decidly dodgy smaller 'intermediates' smell blood in the water, and set up elaborate sytems to 'clean up' traceability of the objectionable origins. Unfortunately, the locals will have to sell even cheaper (because they can not export legitimately) and the difference will be pocketed by the people providing the 'whitening' service.
There have been many such examples in the past, and there will be many more in the future. Issuing a law and associated form is not going to work. Never has, never will.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
