In June 2007, several thousand delegates from 171 member states and a small army of wildlife advocates and lobbyists, trailed by a phalanx of global journalists, converged for the Fourteenth Conference of the Parties of CITES. Every two or three years CITES holds this gargantuan event in some major urban center around the globe. This time it was at the World Forum Conference Centre in The Hague, Netherlands, whose four floors (“Oceans,” “Continents,” “Rivers,” and “Mountains”) featured geographically named meeting areas (“Yangtze” and “Kilimanjaro,” and the like) and gave attendees plenty of room to mingle, negotiate, petition, and plead. The site had the decor of an up-to-date international airport terminal, and for nearly two weeks delegates flowed in and around the 430,000 square feet of the cavernous building while being lobbied to get on board one proposal or another.
At these CITES gatherings, countries that have newly signed on to the convention are welcomed into the fold (this year was Kyrgyzstan’s turn), and individual delegations get down to the business of wrestling with proposals to amend the growing list of more than thirty thousand plants and animals whose commerce is now monitored internationally. As always, focus fell on the eight hundred–odd highly endangered species. International commercial trade in these is—with some exceptions—banned. At this meeting, depending on how the voting went, some trade in ivory could again be permitted. With scores of topics on the agenda, from the spiny dogfish and the slow loris to European eels and Guatemalan rose-wood, no one wanted the tangled and contentious ivory issue to dominate discussions, but as usual at CITES meetings that issue was inevitably the elephant in the room no one could ignore. For CITES’s own logo forms a stylized elephant silhouette out of the letters of its acronym, more evidence, if one needed it, of the deeply symbolic role the animal plays in conservation circles.
The African elephant, as no delegate needed to be reminded of, is both an emotional subject and a regulatory headache because of its so-called split listing. The elephant populations in most of the three dozen countries where the animal is found were listed in Appendix I, the category reserved for species threatened with extinction; this listing meant any cross-border commercial trade in elephant products (meat, hides, ivory, etc.) was strictly prohibited. The populations in a few southern African countries, however, were listed in Appendix II in recognition of their less threatened status, allowing for some controlled trade in their products, under certain conditions.
By now, this bifurcated approach to the African elephant had also become a fault line that split wildlife organizations into two uneasy camps and further divided African countries into two opposing blocs. A CITES press release issued before the conference attempted to characterize the difficulties delegates faced over ivory: “The long-running global debate over the African elephant has focused on benefits that income from ivory sales may bring to conservation and to local communities living side by side with these large and potentially dangerous animals versus concerns that such sales may encourage poaching. This year’s proposals,” it went on, “again reflect opposing views on how best to improve the conservation and sustainable use of the world’s largest land animal.”
The language showed a new emphasis on what CITES had long acknowledged: that the developing world is not only where much of the world’s biodiversity is found but where wild flora and fauna are often central to local economies. In remarks at the opening ceremony Willem Wijnstekers, secretary-general of CITES, stated that decisions on whether to provide trade protection to a species “should take into account potential impacts on the livelihood of the poor.” Given that a well-controlled animal trade can not only help needy communities but generate funds for conservation, CITES was not likely to support trade bans without solid evidence that commerce was detrimental to a species.
The yawning gulf that has always been evident between conservationists who want to strike a balance between concern for wildlife survival and addressing human needs and wildlife advocates drawn to preservation without reservation was now out in the open. Both sides arrived at the conference with their long-standing, differing attitudes toward wildlife intact and staked out their claims.
No one at the conference would dispute the fact that elephants are under siege in Central Africa, where war, corruption, and the crumbling infrastructure of national parks are clearly undermining conservation efforts. But there were sharp differences of opinion on whether trade in ivory was exacerbating that situation—or perhaps could help under-funded wildlife departments all over Africa.
Mainstream science-based conservation organizations at the conference, such as the World Conservation Union (IUCN), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), were solidly behind sustainable use. Philip Muruthi, of AWF’s Nairobi office, came to the conference with the foundation’s position statement. Although AWF had played a leading role in bringing about the 1989 ivory ban in the face of plummeting elephant populations, the organization supported “in principle the concept that when species are given value, such as through trade, the incentive for conserving them is increased.”
Sue Mainka, the head of the IUCN delegation, made it clear that the international coalition of scientists was similarly aligned. “What we do not want is that banning or limiting trade in a species drives people further into poverty,” she said. “What we do want is effective measures that discourage illegal trade in wildlife, while allowing sustainable use of healthy species populations that generates income and opportunities for local communities.”
In line with their deeply held views, however, animal advocacy groups—the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), Born Free, and others with a fixed focus on strict preservation—are distinctly less sympathetic to development and poverty concerns in the elephant’s range states. To them, any consumptive wildlife use is suspect, an approach that would lead only to increasing the multibillion-dollar worldwide trade in wildlife products. They painted any effort to lift the ivory ban as an ominous attempt to reopen trade before adequate policing can stanch the poaching that continues to threaten many of the African continent’s most vulnerable elephant populations.
Not surprisingly, animal advocacy groups remain unmoved by the economic value that African nations see in their legitimate ivory stockpiles. Will Travers, head of the Born Free Foundation, believes that such stockpiles—not just in Africa but in every country—should be put “permanently beyond use” through destruction or burial. (Presumably he would not, like some latter-day Savonarola, advocate putting a torch to ivory art, but it’s unclear what he’d like to see done with worked ivory in general.)
Back in 2002 Mavuso Msiamang, South Africa’s national parks chief executive, had said, “If someone wants to buy our ivory and burn it, we will sell it,” he said. “Because believe you me, we need the money.” Pro-ban groups like Born Free, despite their deep pockets, have yet to pursue that possibility. Instead they’ve been pressuring African countries to destroy their own stocks on the theory that crippling legitimate commerce would help stop illegal trade. But would it?
The records of some twelve thousand seizures of illegal ivory by customs officers, police, and various authorities worldwide have been gathered over the past decade by TRAFFIC. The extensive database fails to show a correlation between CITES decisions on ivory sales and illegal trade—even after the 1997 one-off sale to Japan. This lack of hard data doesn’t impress animal advocate groups, whose positions are, after all, based on conviction rather than on science. They claim that anecdotal evidence shows otherwise, and that an uptick in elephant poaching has always followed any suggestion of restoring legal trade in ivory.
African delegations were also split—in fact, deeply divided—over whether to vote to uphold the ivory ban or to lift it to some degree. Among them were a number of vocal sub-Saharan states that resented being lectured on what they should do with their ivory by lobbying groups from nations that had for centuries plundered Africa’s ivory treasure and profited mightily from it. Southern African states in particular bristled at the implication that their interest in selling their ivory stockpiles to generate funds for elephant conservation implied they didn’t care about their herds. Didn’t the fact that they were awash with elephants show that their management policies were working and that their populations were healthy? For them, imposing the ivory ban amounted to punishing countries that had done right by their elephants in order to provide cover for the conservation failures of other states, especially those anxious to appease powerful animal advocacy groups. According to some delegates, those particular NGOs used carrot-and-stick methods to gain an undue influence on the wildlife policies of several African nations, Kenya in particular. “Kenya’s the jewel in the animal rightists’ crown,” one conservationist told me privately. In his view, these groups would do whatever they could to keep that East African country from going “consumptive,” offering funds in support of policies they approved of, while not hesitating to threaten tourist boycotts in retaliation for wildlife policies they disagreed with.
THE STAGE HAD been set for contentious ivory-and-elephant debates even before the conference opened on June 3. For months Kenya, supported by Mali, had been calling for a twenty-year moratorium on international trade in raw or worked ivory. Patrick Osmond, the head of species conservation and management at the Kenya Wildlife Service, saw the lengthy moratorium as necessary to let elephant populations recover and “to refine the mechanisms of law enforcement.” He argued that “elephants are dramatically becoming depleted.” That position seemed out of step with an earlier statement by KWS director Julius Kipng’etich announcing an experimental program of birth control to keep the country’s “optimal” current population of elephants from increasing unduly. “We want to take measures now to avoid a crisis in the future,” he told the Standard in Nairobi. Nonetheless, Kipng’etich said his country would firmly oppose any move to reopen the ivory trade. “We cannot control poaching,” he said flatly.
In contrast, Edward Mbewe, a spokesperson for Zimbabwe’s Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, said his country, like others with burgeoning elephant populations, wanted to see the focus on prevention of poaching rather than the prohibition of ivory trading. “We want communities to continue benefiting from wildlife in order to alleviate poverty,” he said.
Botswana, with its bulging herds, came with related proposals, supported by Namibia, for annual ivory export quotas for future sales from southern African countries; in addition, it was proposing yet another oneoff sale of forty tons from its own huge stockpile.
Gathering continent-wide support for a sweeping moratorium or the reopening of international trade on an annual basis looked increasingly unlikely. Debates became so heated they threatened to consume the conference. What kick-started them was the premeeting decision on June 2 by the CITES Standing Committee. Now that the required field data on elephant poaching and population levels had been gathered, and Japan had set sufficiently strong domestic ivory trade controls, the committee decided that the long-postponed implementation of the one-off sale of sixty tons from ivory stockpiles in South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia approved in 2002 could go forward. Susan Lieberman, WWF’s Global Species Program director, agreed with the ivory sale to Japan, although she cautioned that it “should be closely monitored,” as she put it, to ensure “early detection of potential problems or trends.” She emphasized that enforcement—stopping poaching and illegal sales—should be the focus of CITES.
Animal welfare groups were aghast. “Pro-ivory traders were breaking open the champagne!” Travers wrote in disgust on his Born Free blog. Peter Pueschel of IFAW, which had sought to sway delegates with a prominent billboard outside the center featuring a fading elephant image against a bloodred sunset (“Will only words remain? Give them a break! Vote for the 20-year moratorium.”), condemned the authorization of the sale, citing “all sorts of loopholes” in Japan’s ivory controls. “This decision is a disgrace,” he fumed.
These groups were also alarmed by the surprise last-minute effort by China at the Standing Committee meeting to be included in the one-off sale with Japan, which created an instant furor in the basement conference room. China pitched the advantages of its inclusion in economic terms: it would create healthy competition and increase profits to the ivory exporting countries. Since CITES was allowing one-off ivory sales to help raise funds for conservation, this was an attractive argument to some, but others felt China was not yet ready to effectively police its own black market. (The measure was narrowly voted down, but China would gain approval from the Standing Committee a year later.)
Over the course of the twelve-day conference that followed, Kenya and Mali, which had lined up nearly two dozen African countries for their push to get a twenty-year moratorium on ivory sales, saw support for this sweeping measure erode. Southern African states slammed their agenda as draconian and impugned Kenya’s motives. Namibia’s environment and tourism minister, Willem Konjore, pointed out that his country’s elephant population had doubled in the past decade, and said, “Illegal killing has been so low as to be insignificant.” The sale of elephant products would bring funds back into rural communities willing “to coexist and share resources with elephants,” he said. Gerhard Verdoom, the executive director of Birdlife South Africa, went on the attack. Telling the media that Kenya’s arguments were “rubbish,” he asserted that “the elephants in South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia are well managed. There is minimal poaching. In East and West Africa there is a lot of poaching going on due to poor wildlife management,” he said, pointedly adding that “we do not want to be punished for the wildlife mismanagement in Kenya.”
After two weeks of exhausting and emotional negotiations, the German delegates, representing the European Union, met with the opposing groups. They hoped to merge the two proposals to avoid acrimonious arguments on the floor of the plenary session and the possibility of CITES having a political disaster on its hands should no consensus be reached. But bickering African delegations were still deadlocked. Kenya and Mali had offered to scale back their proposal for an ivory trade moratorium to twelve years and conceded that the latest one-off sale would be acceptable. South Africa countered by proposing, on top of the just-authorized sale, generous export permits—for itself, Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. The funds would be used for elephant conservation; a six-year trade ban would follow.
The AWF’s position paper had put the matter succinctly: “The future of Africa’s wildlife is ultimately in the hands of the people of Africa.” Kenya Wildlife Services’ Patrick Omondi conceded as much. “Africa is huge, and we all have different challenges,” he said. “We really need a practical way out.” Delegates headed into closed-door sessions with—for the first time—ministers from their respective countries, adding a political dimension to the negotiations and signaling their seriousness. In a final, agonizing effort, delegates from the elephant range states worked until four in the morning on June 14 to hammer out their first regional consensus on ivory.
Under a compromise presented by Zambia and Chad, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe would be permitted to make a single sale in addition to the one-off sale of sixty tons agreed upon in 2002, which had just been given the go-ahead. This additional sale would be limited to all stocks in government hands that had been registered and verified as of January 31, 2007. Each sale would consist of a single shipment to a permitted destination, and proceeds were to “be used exclusively for elephant conservation and community conservation and development programs within or adjacent to the elephant range.” After the shipments were completed, no new proposals would be considered by CITES from these countries for a “resting period” of nine years. In the meantime, the CITES Standing Committee would work on “developing a new and more effective approach to taking future decisions on the international ivory trade.”
There were grumblings over the inclusion of Zimbabwe, whose imploding state and rising poaching under the last stages of President Robert Mugabe’s regime made it suspect to some delegations (the United States, for one). And there were complaints that Japan’s domestic control over ivory was far from perfect; the seizure of a shipment of nearly three tons of illegal ivory in Osaka the year before was read by some as evidence of a brisk black market, though by others as evidence of effective law enforcement.
Overall, the decision was greeted with relief and cautious optimism. “Elephants get nine-year reprieve,” was a typical media sentiment. Save the Elephants founder Iain Douglas-Hamilton said his group was “afraid the sale will stimulate a parallel surge of demand for illegal ivory but we are quite glad that Africa has actually come to a consensus. Once the ivory sale is over, at least there will be a nine-year period without it.” Some animal campaigners were quick to denounce the deal. IFAW warned that it would “excite a demand that can never be supplied by legal sources.”
Mainstream conservation groups were positive; the WWF called it a “milestone” consensus. African media rallied around the decision, pleased that the delegations had struck their own continent-wide compromise. Zimbabwe’s Environment and Tourism minister announced that “this will allow human beings and elephants to coexist in Africa.” Julius Kipng’etich, the KWS head, did an about-face and hailed the accord as “Africa’s finest hour, a proud moment for the continent, its people and the elephant.”
Additional political wrangling, bureaucratic snafus, and a growing number of empty seats left by delegates scrambling to catch early flights home on the last day of the conference meant that some important business was left hanging in the air—notably, how to shut down the illegal but flourishing domestic ivory markets in places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, Thailand, and China and tighten enforcement and border checks for illegal shipments.
And there were a lot of questions about the compromise. No one seemed to know just how many tons of ivory might be in government-held stocks over and above the sixty tons originally agreed to; early estimates ranged from a hundred fifty to two hundred tons more, but Esmond Bradley Martin thought the figure might be closer to hundred tons. He also noted that Japan had been using a modest ten tons a year from its own dwindling stocks—would it now be able to absorb upwards of a hundred tons in a single gulp? The Japanese ivory industry, like others worldwide, had never really recovered from the 1989 ban, and it was an open question whether that industry could spring to life to accommodate this unexpectedly large dump of ivory on the market. It was also unclear what price the Japanese would pay. There would be competition among the country’s ivory dealers for the best lots, raising hopes that they might pay handsomely and underscore Japan’s usefulness as a good conservation partner. South Africa announced it expected to earn $200 a kilo, which meant roughly $9 million from the 50 tons of stockpiled ivory in Kruger alone.
These issues, however, seemed minor in comparison to the unknowns that the inclusion of China brought to the impending transaction. The 2008 CITES decision to designate it as an importing country raised fresh concerns which the Convention’s secretary-general sought to address. “The Secretariat will closely supervise this sale and evaluate its impact on elephant population levels throughout Africa,” Willem Wijnstekers said. “We will continue monitoring the Chinese and Japanese domestic trade controls to ensure that unscrupulous traders do not take this opportunity to launder ivory from illegal origin.”
DECISIONS TAKEN AT the 2007 CITES meeting tried to meld competing visions of how to ensure the survival of the African elephant in the wild. Given the changing fortunes of the African elephant in the evolving landscape of the developing African continent, complex responses, like the one worked out in the Hague, look likely for years to come. The heart of the issue remains how to reconcile worldwide concern for the magnificent, beloved elephant with the rights of nations to benefit from their natural resources. For many people in countries that harbor elephant populations, it is self-evident that they must be allowed to gain from the gleaming ivory that inexorably accumulates within their borders, tusk by tusk.
It is possible—only possible, I admit—that the 2007 CITES meeting may prove to be a turning point in the troubled history of the ivory trade. But that can happen only if ivory exports, long stained with the slaughter of elephant herds and human misery, are treated strictly as a self-renewing resource that funds the effective conservation of the animal that has always been its greatest source. To achieve this requires vision, courage, regulation, and political will.
As long as there are elephants, there will be ivory. Now, surely, it is ivory’s turn to help ensure that there will always be elephants.