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After COP11 most reasonable people might have
expected that no more proposals aimed at excluding "sustainable
use" from the conservation agenda would be submitted. After all, at
COP11 proposals with this goal were withdrawn before being defeated. Every
major conservation organization and treaty has now accepted that
"sustainable use" is a conservation tool.
Well those with such expectations about COP12 will be disappointed. It
was obvious that opponents to the whole concept of sustainable use have
been active in the interim period. They were able to generate considerable
opposition to significant amendments proposed for revised listing criteria
but this was not the only field in which they were active. The provisional
agenda for COP12 indicates a surprising number of Parties involved in
submissions that fail to grasp the critically important role sustainable
use is playing now, and can play in the future. One assumes the
Conference of the Parties will be as strong as it was in Gigiri, and that
it will dispose of these submissions in the same way.
By way of example, consider one of these documents: COP12 Doc. 16.3,
submitted by Ecuador with respect to Cooperation and synergy with the
Inter-American Convention for the Protection and Conservation of Sea
Turtles.
The document and the proposed resolution are presented in a way that
"appears" rather positive, but appearances can be highly
deceptive. It is obvious that its prime motivation is to engender
opposition to the Cuban proposal to transfer to Appendix II, the population
of hawksbill turtles Eretmochelys imbricata living in the waters
under Cuban jurisdiction and, the application of the United Kingdom for the
Secretariat to register the Cayman Turtle Farm as a captive-breeding
operation for green turtles Chelonia mydas. The registration
application is currently subject to the procedure of consultation launched
by the Secretariat, but it is likely that at least one Party will object.
Consequently, the application must be referred to the Conference of the
Parties and it should be on the agenda of COP12.
If the draft resolution contained in COP12 Doc. 16.3 was adopted,
promoting the Inter-American Convention which was itself drafted and
promoted by NGO's totally opposed to any use of turtles for any reason, it
would add weight to the many fallacious and illogical arguments - for
example "legal trade will promote illegal trade" - used to
encourage opposition to the proposal by Cuba and application by the United
Kingdom.
The supporting document and the preamble of the draft resolution
indicate the objective of the Inter-American Convention: "to
promote the protection, conservation and recovery of sea turtle populations
and of the habitats on which they depend, based on the best available
scientific evidence, taking into account the environmental, socioeconomic
and cultural characteristics of the Parties".
This objective superficially may seem reasonable, and it may seem that
‘sustainable use’ was simply omitted by accident. Not so. Efforts by a
number of potential signatories to have sustainable use formally included
were ignored.
To achieve its objective -- this is not said in the document -- the
Inter-American Convention provides for extremely restrictive measures: the
"prohibition of intentional capture, retention or killing of sea
turtles" and the "prohibition of domestic trade in sea
turtles, their eggs, parts and products". This implies also the
prohibition of international trade.
In the preamble of the Inter-American Convention, it is stated that
their Parties understand that sea turtles, including the hawksbill, in the
Americas are threatened or endangered and that some of the species may face
an imminent risk of extinction. Yet this statement is obviously a
falsehood. The proposal submitted by Cuba demonstrates unequivocally that
this is not the case for the population living in Cuban waters, for several
others subject to monitoring, and most likely for the Caribbean population
as a whole. There is abundant evidence that the wild populations of other
sea turtle species in a range of Caribbean countries have been increasing
at very fast rates throughout the 1990's.
The Inter-American Convention does not provide for the deletion of an
isolated population from its Annex I, in which all species subject to its
provisions are listed. Thus the Inter-American Convention does not
recognize that individual States can and should be encouraged to conserve
and manage their populations efficiently, and should be allowed to benefit
from their efforts and investment in conservation. Therefore, as long as
some States continue to tolerate illegal activities, all States are
expected to suffer.
It must be acknowledged that "each Party may allow exceptions"
to the prohibition of intentional capture, retention or killing of sea
turtles, and of domestic trade in sea turtles, their eggs, parts and
products "to satisfy economic subsistence needs of
traditional communities". But, those exemptions are subject to the
recommendations of a Consultative Committee and shall not undermine efforts
to achieve the objective of the Convention.
These reasons alone should be enough to alert the Parties and to
encourage them to oppose to the draft resolution from Ecuador. However, we
must also consider the principles that the Conference of the Parties should
follow when considering the adoption of such a resolution. There are many
treaties, conventions and multilateral agreements throughout the world,
dealing with particular wildlife species in particular regions. Why should
CITES, which is a global treaty, be linked by a resolution of the
Conference of the Parties to one or more of these treaties, and not to them
all? In this specific case, CITES, which has currently almost 160 Parties,
would be linked with a treaty which has only nine Parties. This would be
difficult to justify - to say the least.
Two main arguments are used to invite to the adoption of the draft
resolution. First, reference is made to Article XV, paragraph 2(b), of
CITES. It provides, for amendment proposals concerning marine species, that
inter-governmental bodies having a function in relation to those species
shall be consulted. Second, reference is made to Goal 5 and Objectives 5.1
and 5.2 of the CITES Strategic Plan (Strategic Vision through 2005)
concerning the cooperation with international stakeholders.
None of these objectives are anywhere near sufficient to justify the
adoption of a resolution. It is well known that the CITES text is much
stronger than any resolution of the Conference of the Parties, and that the
Secretariat has no choice than to obey its provisions. Regarding the
Strategic Plan and its objectives, they are certainly as effective as a
resolution, since they form an integral part of a Decision of the
Conference of the Parties. In such circumstances, a resolution is totally
useless.
We do hope that the Conference of the Parties to CITES will not embark
on such an initiative and will not create a precedent in adopting the draft
resolution proposed by Ecuador. 
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