The Hague, 14 June 2007
- Eighteen years after the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species
(CITES) banned the ivory trade, Ministers
from the African elephant range states have
for the first time achieved a regional consensus
on how to address this highly charged issue.
Under the compromise agreement reached
today, each of four southern African countries
will be permitted to make a single sale
of ivory on top of the one-off sale totalling
60 tonnes that was agreed in principle in
2002 and given the go-ahead earlier this
month.
The ivory for these new sales will consist
of all government-owned stocks that have
been registered and verified as of 31 January
2007. Each sale is to consist of a single
shipment per destination and may only go
to countries whose internal controls on
ivory sales have been verified as being
sufficient by the CITES Secretariat.
The agreement stipulates that after these
shipments have been completed no new proposals
for further sales from these four countries
are to be considered by CITES during a "resting
period" of nine years that will commence
as soon as the new sales have been completed.
In the meantime, the CITES Standing Committee,
which oversees the implementation of CITES
decisions when the Conference of the Parties
to CITES (CoP) is not in session, will work
on developing a new and more effective approach
to taking future decisions on the international
ivory trade.
"This African solution to an African
problem marks a great step forward for wildlife
conservation," said CITES Secretary-General
Willem Wijnstekers. "It is good news
for the elephant, good news for the people
who live alongside them and good news for
regional cooperation in Africa."
Background
The long-running global debate over the
African elephant has focused on the benefits
that income from ivory sales may bring to
conservation and to local communities living
side by side with elephants and concerns
that such sales may encourage poaching.
CITES banned the international commercial
ivory trade in 1989. Then, in 1997, recognizing
that some southern African elephant populations
were healthy and well managed, it permitted
Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe to make a
one-time sale of a stock of ivory to Japan
totalling 50 tonnes. The sales took place
in 1999 and earned some USD 5 million.
In 2002, CITES agreed in principle to allow
a second sale from Botswana (20 tonnes),
Namibia (10 tonnes) and South Africa (30
tonnes). (In 2004 a request that CITES authorize
annual quotas was not agreed.) The one-time
sales were made conditional on the ability
of the MIKE programme (Monitoring of Illegal
Killing of Elephants) to establish up-to-date
and comprehensive baseline data on elephant
poaching and population levels. MIKE was
established to provide an objective assessment
of what impact future ivory sales may have
on elephant populations and poaching.
The CITES Standing Committee determined
on 2 June of this year that the MIKE baseline
data have now been assembled and that the
sales could go forward.
For this year's conference, Botswana and
Namibia jointly submitted a new proposal
to ease the conditions for permitting future
sales of ivory. In addition, Botswana requested
authorization for a one-off sale of 40 tonnes
of existing ivory stocks followed by an
annual export quota of up to eight tonnes
of ivory per year from its national population.
Taking the opposing view, Kenya and Mali
proposed that a ban on trade in raw or worked
ivory from Botswana, Namibia, South Africa
and Zimbabwe be imposed for a period of
20 years. They argued that allowing any
trade in ivory will increase the poaching
of elephants.
The African range States met separately
throughout the course of the current CITES
conference in an effort to bridge their
differences. With the help of Ministers
attending yesterday's Ministerial segment,
they managed today to reach the consensus
described above.
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