African elephants - The Good, The Bad and The Plain Stupid

The old CITES CoP chestnut - African elephants - was discussed today and, as with every CITES since CoP7, it was filled with the usual drama, controversy and hot air. However, the discussion today probably encapsulated within a one-day session all that was good, bad and, well, plain stupid, about the elephant debate in CITES over these years.

Firstly, the good. The day started out with reports from the two global monitoring systems that were established by CITES to track the illegal killing of elephants and illegal trade in ivory – MIKE and ETIS. The news was certainly not good - globally, the trend in illicit trade in elephant ivory continues to increase, largely due to poorly regulated domestic ivory markets in Africa and Asia and the increasing involvement of organized crime syndicates in the illicit trade. The countries which were identified in 2002 as being the most heavily implicated in the illicit ivory trade - the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Thailand - were still being identified as the major culprits today. CITES action plans to date had not changed the situation for the better.

However, what was good about this discussion was the growing recognition - and sense of alarm - that was evident from the various interventions that were made and the consensus that something urgent needed to be done. And trust me, the word 'consensus' is not one that is often seen when you're talking about elephants at CITES. Kenya highlighted the enforcement problems some range States faced and the African Elephant Action Plan which all range States had endorsed at this meeting to address these and other challenges. China pledged to not only continue its strong enforcement action at home but also reach out to its nationals travelling to those countries where its citizens had been implicated in the illicit ivory trade. Even Nigeria - which had been identified as a problem country in every single ETIS Analysis since the first assessment was conducted in 2002 - announced, for the first time, new initiatives to enhance enforcement capacity in the country.

The CITES Secretariat, which acknowledged that it had not initiated compliance measures in the past, now said that the time was fast approaching for such measures to start having teeth. Recommendations from the Secretariat to that effect were accepted by (here's that word again) consensus.

But whatever feelings there were of a shared mission among the Parties quickly evaporated the moment the two proposals from Tanzania and Zambia to downlist their elephants to Appendix II was discussed. We now come to the bad part of the day. And by 'bad' I most certainly don't mean the proponent countries. Whatever you may think of the proposals being presented by Tanzania and Zambia, their conduct throughout the debate was restrained and dignified. They made concessions - Tanzania splitting their proposal into two parts, giving Parties the option of refusing their request for a one-off sale, while Zambia withdrew the raw ivory sale component of their proposal altogether. They were not in denial - both countries admitted to the weaknesses identified in the Panel of Expert reports. They didn't rant.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the Parties that ostensibly represented the forces of elephant conservation. If conservationists were appalled at and disgusted by the behaviour of Libya during the Bluefin tuna debate, I wonder how they felt when their ally in the elephant debate - Mali - resorted to the same style of name-calling, insults, shouting out points-of-order and general foaming at the mouth when they attacked the Zambia proposal. Cheered on by their NGO allies, opponents of the proposal launched into emotive tirades about what a catastrophe a one-off sale of ivory would lead to - even though it was plainly clear that the one-off sale was already off the table.

As Botswana pointed out later, it was certainly ironic that the 23-nation African Elephant Coalition that was so vehemently opposed to the downlisting had between them 46,000 elephants (and decreasing fast), while the 'bad' guys in Southern Africa had over 400,000. Increasing elephant numbers evidently doesn't appear to be an indicator of successful elephant conservation.

The two proposals were, of course, defeated. And while I personally did not support Zambia's original proposal, I couldn't help feeling sorry for the way they were treated today. They’ll certainly receive more of a benefit of a doubt from me the next time round. They did not have a chance, really - the worldwide media frenzy that had been generated about them months before and the blood-soaked newspaper spreads made sure of that. You'd have thought that stomping on the Tanzania and Zambia proposals would have been victory enough. But, nooooooo! This is where we come to the 'plainly stupid' part of the day.

Now we all know the old saying 'An elephant never forgets' and the idiom of a person having a memory like an elephant. The final session of the day, unfortunately, clearly demonstrated that some of the most vocal supporters of elephant conservation most certainly don't have the memory of an elephant.

I for one remember leaving the 14th meeting of the CoP at the Hague three years ago, quite satisfied that African Elephant range states had come together to break an 18-year ivory deadlock by agreeing to a compromise presented by Chad and (ironically) Zambia. The compromise called for a 9-year official suspension of ivory trading by Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe after their approved one- off sales took place.

At least that was how I remembered it.

Evidently, the 23 nations of the African Elephant Coalition and the NGOs cheering them on all had a quite different recollection of events three years ago. They say that the ban applied to ALL African Elephant range States - not just Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe. So today they sought to introduce a draft Decision that attempted to 'remove the ambiguity' of the CoP 14 compromise by making the ban on elephant proposals apply to all African Elephant range States.

I thought that it was probably me who losing his wits and decided to check the relevant annotation in the Appendices. It said that "no further proposals to allow trade in elephant ivory from populations already in Appendix II shall be submitted to the Conference of the Parties for the period from CoP14 and ending nine years from the date of the single sale of ivory." Hmmm. Populations already in Appendix II, eh? Sounds pretty unambiguous to me. To add insult to injury, that particular annotation was titled "Populations of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe (listed in Appendix II)". That looks pretty unambiguous too.

Frankly, I am still mystified why this proposal was even suggested. Was there something lost in translation in the annotation? Did some mysterious wave of collective memory loss make all those countries and NGOs simply forget what happened three years ago? And in what way did the original proposal of increasing the ban from nine years to twenty years make the situation a little less 'ambiguous'. I'm sure they weren't just trying to rat out of the deal. They probably just forgot to read their documents after CoP14.

They did later clarify that they felt the text in the annotation did not reflect the spirit of the compromise that was reached. Why they didn't say this three years ago is a mystery. And annotaton text is always debated to death for a good reason - it shouldn't just exist in the spirit world.

It was also astonishing to see that a number of countries that spoke so passionately in favour of a moratorium on elephant downlistings today were the very same countries who even more passionately demolished the Atlantic bluefin tuna moratorium proposal just the week before. Now that's ambiguous.

Anyway, the proposal from the African Elephant Coalition was, quite rightly in my humble opinion, soundly rejected. No one should be rewarded for not reading their documents after attending a meeting.

So, in summary, the whole day's debate resulted in no one winning and everyone losing. Unfortunately, among the biggest losers are the African Elephant. If we'd only spent the day on the good, without wasting all that time and energy on the bad and the plain stupid, the African Elephant would probably have ended up winners in the end.