Agent Green: SUMAL 3.0 risks repeating the mistakes that enabled the theft of Romania’s forests
The NGO calls on the Environment Ministry for a genuine system of control, transparency and automatic prevention of forestry fraud
Bucharest, 20 May 2026 — Agent Green warns that the current SUMAL 3.0 proposal, submitted for public consultation by the Environment Ministry, does not sufficiently address the vulnerabilities that have enabled years of fraud, illegal transport and manipulation of timber traceability in Romania. The organization has sent the authorities an extensive set of observations and proposals to turn SUMAL into a genuine tool for combating forest crime.
Almost four years after publishing the report “Ten methods of theft and ten reasons to update SUMAL”, Agent Green maintains that many of the loopholes identified in SUMAL 2.0 are not sufficiently addressed in the new version proposed by the authorities.
The full document submitted by Agent Green to the Environment Ministry on Monday to improve SUMAL 3.0, which is under public consultation, can be downloaded here (PDF).
The organization calls for automatic and independent control mechanisms, including:
- artificial intelligence to detect anomalies and fraud;
- integration of Sentinel satellite imagery from the European Space Agency;
- real-time GPS tracking of timber transport;
- mandatory georeferenced photographs for logging, loading, transport and receipt;
- automatic alerts to the Police, Gendarmerie and Forest Guard when irregularities are identified.
Agent Green also calls for greater public transparency through development of the Inspectorul Pădurii application and an “Inspectorul Pădurii PLUS” version, giving independent organizations and specialists wider access to verify field data.
“SUMAL must be more than a reporting application: it must be a system capable of automatically preventing fraud and triggering rapid interventions when illegal activity is suspected. Romania loses valuable forests every day these vulnerabilities remain active,” says Gabriel Păun, president of Agent Green.
The organization welcomes some directions in the proposal, such as interoperability with the national e-Transport system and reducing the period for storing timber in forests from 120 to 60 days. However, without automatic checks, genuine transparency and limits on changing or canceling system data, the new provisions risk remaining insufficient.
Agent Green calls on the Environment Ministry to turn the public consultation into a genuine reform process and include mechanisms in the final SUMAL 3.0 version that:
- prevent retroactive data manipulation;
- automatically detect suspicious shipments;
- provide wider public access to information;
- enable rapid intervention by the authorities in cases of fraud.
The future of SUMAL 3.0 is a major test of the Romanian state’s ability to combat illegal logging and protect Romania’s last valuable forests.
More about the campaign: Stop illegal logging
Agent Green’s report on SUMAL vulnerabilities: Ten methods of theft and ten reasons to update SUMAL
