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CITES’COP 11 Opens The eleventh Conference of the Parties to CITES (COP 11) opened Sunday afternoon, April 9, amid a raucous and highly orchestrated media circus of balloons, giant rubber whales, and children stopping traffic with signs to “save the elephants” all provided courtesy of the animal protection NGOs who consider Kenya and COP 11 their own policy-making playground. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending upon one’s point of view, their influence in CITES’ policy-making process directly affects the lives and future of many of the planet’s animal and plant species, habitat, and diverse human cultures. While advocates of sustainable use have much to achieve and reasonable hope for success, Kenya’s President, the Honorable Daniel arap Moi delivered an ominous keynote speech at the opening of COP 11’s first full work day, Monday, April 10. He denounced efforts by range nations with abundant elephant stocks to turn stockpiled ivory and hides into hard currency to fund wildlife conservation. President Moi echoed Kenyan and extreme NGO calls for the end to trade in “all animal products.” The first two days at Gigiri proved to be filled with unexpected surprises for advocates of sustainable use and “no-use” protectionists alike. Prior to the delegates’ arrival in Kenya, the CITES Secretariat reversed a preliminary opinion supporting the proposals and issued a recommendation for delegates to “reject” efforts to transfer specific stocks of minke and gray whales from Appendix I to Appendix II. The basis of that about face was attributed to the negative analysis of the downlist proposals by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). However, no sooner had COP 11 opened then delegates, NGOs, and presumably the Secretariat itself, were shocked to learn of the controversy over the IUCN whale report voiced by a number of scientific authorities who served on the IUCN review panels for those proposals (see accompanying story). That reaction placed IUCN and the Secretariat in potentially difficult situations. The second “surprise” facing delegates was the unprecedented and harsh penalties recommended by the Secretariat’s fact-finding mission sent to investigate India’s tiger conservation program. The mission report recommended a worldwide stoppage of all funds for tiger conservation being sent to India by governments and NGOs alike plus a “shunning” of India by all CITES party nations through refusal to issue import or export permits for any CITES’ specie involving that Asian nation should India fail to remedy the flaws in its conservation program by COP 12. (see related story) It would be the height of understatement to say that COP 11 promised to be “interesting.” |
