EU Must Not Be Ambivalent on Ivory Trade! Exceptional Gathering of Seventeen African Governments in Brussels Calls on EU to Confirm Its Position in Public

AFRICAN ELEPHANT COALITION1

……PRESS RELEASE…PRESS RELEASE…PRESS RELEASE……

Embargo, 15 hrs, 25 January

EU Must Not Be Ambivalent on Ivory Trade! Exceptional gathering of seventeen African Governments in Brussels calls on EU to confirm its position in public

25 January 2010, Brussels, representatives of 17 African governments have come to Brussels specially this week to call on the EU to take an unequivocal position in defence of the total moratorium on ivory trade for all countries. This historic move is unprecedented as many African countries fear that EU support for elephant conservation may now be ambivalent at best. Yet the EU played a pivotal role in negotiating this moratorium in 2007 (see Notes for Editors, below, for more on this).

Entirely against the spirit of the 2007 agreement within the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), Tanzania and Zambia have taken steps to open the door to renewed sales of ivory from what they call their “own” elephant populations. The African Elephant Coalition is calling on the EU to reject this dual initiative and to support the Coalition in clarifying unequivocally the scope and nature of the nine-year moratorium.

The 27 votes of the EU bloc will be critical in agreeing, once and for all, on the most effective way to protect elephants under CITES. Unfortunately, the EU remains silent with the next crucial meeting of CITES in Doha, Qatar just 6 weeks away (13 to 25 March). Sitting on the fence in Doha, argues the Coalition, would be tantamount to handing the EU’s twenty seven votes to the pro-trade lobby.

“The medium term survival of the African elephant is on the line and this is no time for the EU to take a low-key stance. We expect the twenty seven to do the right thing,” says Patrick Omondi, Senior Assistant Director of the Kenya Wildlife Service and co-chair of the Coalition. “Gruesome, deadly poaching is in full resurgence all across Africa on account of recent sales of ivory approved by CITES for some southern African states, providing perfect cover for the unlawful trade in poached ivory to go on. It is out of the question that the international community countenance renewed sales of ivory in the next fifteen to twenty years when elephant populations are literally about to go extinct in countries like Sierra Leone or Chad. It is time to give the elephants a break and a fighting chance before it is just too late!”

The 17 delegates of the 23-member Coalition who convened in Brussels over the weekend to prepare for the talks, are encouraging the European Parliament to put pressure on the European Commission and the EU’s powerful Council of Ministers. The Coalition is urging MEPs to back the draft Resolution which the Parliament’s environment committee is set to vote on this Wednesday. The committee’s proposal must then receive the approbation of the full Parliament in Strasbourg in February. The Coalition is asking MEPs to urge their governments to publicly support the Coalition stance in the run up to Doha. The Parliament is sending a delegation to Doha but at past meetings of CITES the Council and the Commission excluded MEPs from the official EU delegation. Coalition members will be meeting the 3-member Parliamentary delegation to Doha – Mme Sirpa Pietikäinen (Finlande / PPE), M. Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy (Pays-Bas / ALDE), M. Bas Eickhout (Pays-Bas / Verts).

1 African Elephant Coalition (AEC) members are the governments of Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, Republic of Congo and Government of Southern Sudan. Kenya and Mali are the co-Chairs of the AEC. [The underlined countries were present for the Brussels meetings]

The African Elephant Coalition delegates will also be hosted in the European Parliament by former development commissioner Louis Michel, MEP, who is now co-chair of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly. Michel is keen to hear first hand the solutions that the Coalition has to put forward. Minister Wekesa will address a session of the Joint Parliamentary Assembly on Thursday morning.

Both Japan and especially China are blamed for de facto promoting both the legal and illegal trade by continuing to purchase ivory while the rest of the world has stopped.

Ironically, the proposals by Tanzania and Zambia were put forward just weeks before Sierra Leone announced the potential extinction of its elephant populations due to lethal demand for valuable ivory tusks. Last week, ten elephants were massacred in Chad whose Zakouma National Park elephant population has dwindled from 3800 to 617 individuals between 2005 and 2009…

“This is really the last call for elephants in Africa. The devastating poaching of the 1980s which was first controlled through CITES is now so prevalent again that the African elephant is all but extinct in some countries where once they roamed,” says Mr. Bourama Niagate, Director of Parks and Natural Reserves in Mali, which country co-chairs the Coalition. “This is because limited legal sales were allowed in the recent past providing the perfect cover for illegal trade in poached ivory. If we do not let elephant populations recover over the next 20 years by stopping the trade entirely, there will be no more African elephants outside a few zoological specimens in reserves in southern parts of Africa. Europe needs to do the right thing and back our stance now because it is nearly too late.”

Press Conference of Kenyan Minister of Forestry and Wildlife, 25 January

Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy (one of three MEPs that will represent the European Parliament in Doha), is convening a press conference with the Honorable Dr. Noah Wekesa, Kenyan Minister for Forestry and Wildlife; representatives of the African Elephant Coalition; and eye-witnesses of the poaching.

15 hrs on Monday 25 January European Parliament Press Centre / PHS 0A050 (Anna Politkovskaya Room)

Interpretation will be provided in French and English.

The African Elephant Coalition is being hosted in Brussels by the Embassy of Kenya with the kind support of the Fondation Franz Weber.

ENDS

For more information: contact Eamonn Bates on +32-475 45 24 43

Notes for Editors

At the last United Nations Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (the “CITES Convention”), which took place in the Hague in June 2007, the parties successfully negotiated a nine-year moratorium on ivory trade. Many African countries were arguing for a twenty-year moratorium while a minority of countries were pushing for more trade.

The EU, led by the then German Presidency of the Union, played an instrumental role in negotiations that led to a compromise arrangement – a nine-year moratorium and a single one-off sale of ivory (by Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe) which took place in November 2008.

The ivory trade moratorium was approved following widespread international concern about rising and serious levels of elephant poaching sweeping across Africa. The purpose of the compromise nine-year moratorium was to create a resting period during which elephant populations could stabilise to some degree and during which no further proposals relating to resumption of ivory trade would be submitted to CITES. This would also allow for the assessment and better understanding of the impact of the 2008 one-off ivory sales on poaching, illegal ivory trade and elephant conservation across the continent of Africa.

The spirit of this agreement was well-captured in both the European Commission’s own press release at the time and the report issued by the European Parliament’s delegation at the June 2007 conference of the parties to CITES:

Commission press release: “The consensus agreement reached by the Parties on elephant conservation provides for a nine-year moratorium on ivory sales after an agreed one-off sale of government-owned stocks of raw ivory. The agreement between African ministers ends 18 years of controversial debate in CITES, thus paving the way for more constructive dialogue on elephant conservation programmes in the coming years…”2

Parliament report: “The Conference reached a solution on the ivory issue. The consensus agreement authorizes a one-off sale of raw ivory originating from government stocks registered by 31 January 2007, from Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, in addition to quantities agreed at CoP12, subject to verification of trading partners. It also states that no further ivory trade proposals shall be submitted to the CoP for nine years after the one-off sale; and the secretariat may decide to stop trade in case of non-compliance or proven detrimental impacts on other elephant populations.”3

By definition a moratorium must apply to all parties to the Convention. Much to the dismay and disappointment of all those African countries which had negotiated in good faith, Tanzania and Zambia are now seeking to exploit a loophole in the final wording of the moratorium, totally against the spirit of the agreement made in the Hague.

A group of African countries – Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Togo – are now proposing clarifications to the wording of the 2007 moratorium to ensure that the spirit of the agreement is reflected in the wording and respected by all parties. In addition, they are calling for an extension of the moratorium to twenty years in view of the resurgence of poaching on the back, they believe, of the legalised trade that stemmed from the one-off sales in 2008.

Ends

2 Commission press release of 18 June 2007: “International Trade in Wildlife: European Commission welcomes results of CITES conference, adopts Recommendation on enforcement” http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/07/851

3 European Parliament Summary Note of 2 July 2007: “EP-Members in the EC-Delegation to the Fourteenth Conference of the Parties (COP-14) to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), den Haag, 13 June 2007” http://www.europarl.europa.eu/comparl/envi/pdf/delegations/2004-2009/cites-2007.pdf

ELEPHANT CONSERVATION, CITES AND THE IVORY TRADE POSITION STATEMENT BY THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT COALITION1

Brussels 25 January 2010

Core Position Following its working session in Brussels on 23 and 24 January, the 17 African government representatives, who are all members of the African Elephant Coalition (AEC), are unanimous in their call for maintenance of the strongest possible international moratorium on trade in ivory for all countries.

It is not the intention of the AEC to reopen discussion of international trade in ivory under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) at the fifteenth Conference of the Parties (CoP15). However, with the prospect of the spirit of the moratorium being put in question by some Parties during the next session of the Conference of the Parties scheduled on 13-15 March in Doha, Qatar, the members of the AEC feel obliged to act to preserve the moratorium adopted at The Hague. This would ensure that all Parties to CITES are unequivocally covered as intended by this moratorium.

CoP15 will take place in Doha, Qatar from 13 to 25 March. It is time to agree once and for all on the most effective way to protect elephants under CITES. Certainly, no proposals for elephant trade should be considered until CoP18 in 2019 in the spirit of the decision adopted by consensus at CoP14. Proposals from the United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia should therefore be withdrawn.

The AEC believes that a quick decision on this topic will ensure that elephant conservation measures are sustained as intended in CoP14 and will allow CoP15 to proceed efficiently with the other items on its agenda.

Before it is too late, the EU must do the right thing and publicly defend the integrity of the CoP14 agreement, having played a central role in mediating the total moratorium for ALL. African elephants deserve nothing less.

What the AEC requests The spirit of the agreement mediated by the EU at the last Conference of the Parties in 2007 was that no elephant trade proposals would be submitted by any Party to CITES, at least for the duration of the 9-year moratorium that was agreed at that time.

In the even that discussions take place on Proposals 4, 5, and 6, the AEC is calling on all CITES Parties to support Proposal 6 submitted to CoP15. This proposal aims to ensure that the spirit of the 2007 agreement is spelt out unequivocally, thereby closing a loophole that slipped into the current text that is now being exploited by the United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia (Proposals 4 and 5).

1 African Elephant Coalition (AEC) members are the governments of Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, Republic of Congo and Government of Southern Sudan. Kenya and Mali are the co-Chairs of the AEC. [Underlined countries were present at the Brussels meeting]

A moratorium must apply to all Parties to the Convention, and to all proposals relating to ivory trade.

By proposing to transfer the elephant populations of the United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia from Appendix I to Appendix II, Proposals 4 and 5, in effect, are preparing the ground to recommence trade in ivory in the near future. Acceptance of this at CoP15 in Doha would send the wrong signal to the unscrupulous traders and poachers who flout the law. It would suggest that the international community is not serious about the moratorium or about elephant conservation.

In view of the dramatic resurgence in poaching (for instance the level of poaching in Kenya is the worst it has ever been since the international ban with 232 poached elephants in 2009, 145 in 2008, 47 in 2007; in Chad, the population of Zakouma national park has plummeted from an estimated 3800 individuals in 2005 to around 617 today) and illegal trade that has followed the CITES- approved one-off sales in 2008, the AEC is calling for an extension of the existing 9-year moratorium to twenty years. The twenty-year timeframe is fully justified. A whole generation of elephants across the continent need to be given a chance to re-establish itself, which needs twenty years.

Further background explanation It is essential, at the very least, that the current 9-year moratorium be respected, and that there is no legal trade whatsoever. Legal trade provides cover for the unlawful trafficking of ivory, which directly stimulates the resurgence of poaching across the African continent. This poaching is happening now on a major scale as a result of the “one-off” legal sales of ivory that took place in late 2008. A clear signal must be given that there will be no more proposals that would lead to legal trade in ivory in the near future. Only this will enable law enforcement agencies around the world to clamp down on organised criminal syndicates and illicit ivory markets.

Left unabated, trade-fuelled poaching will continue to undermine the important work that has been carried out by CITES over the past thirty years to preserve the African elephant. While elephant populations may appear relatively healthy in some locations (notably southern Africa), they are at best precarious or already extinct in many regions of the continent. These are the facts : the recent population of elephants that went extinct in the Sambisa area in Nigeria. In Sierra Leone, elephants might have already disappeared.

Allowing trade in ivory from countries where elephant populations may appear to be relatively healthy, encourages poaching in all countries, with especially disastrous results in those areas where local elephant populations are threatened with immediate extinction. For Sierra Leone, it may already be too late – recent poaching is believed to have wiped out the remaining elephant population entirely. In Senegal, only a handful of elephants cling to survival.