EU urged to back ivory trade ban

The EU is under pressure to change its stance on the trade in ivory, ahead of an international meeting on endangered species.

Representatives of the environment ministries of Togo and Niger, African conservation groups, and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) say the EU must support calls for a 20-year ban on trading in ivory to be brought under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

The 171 CITES countries, including the EU member states, US and African and Asian nations, agreed a voluntary ban on international ivory trade in 1989. But limited trading was opened again ten years later at the request of Japan.

Supporters of a total ban say that even restricted hunting of elephants, permitted only under licence, encourages cross-border poaching. The anti-ivory trade delegation complains that the EU’s decision to abstain from voting at the last CITES meeting in 2004 meant there was not enough support to pass a total ban until 2024.

The Togo-Niger delegation and IFAW say the EU should now vote in favour of a 20-year ban, due to be discussed again at the next CITES meeting, on 3-15 June in the Netherlands.

The delegation estimates that the elephant population rose from 16,000 in the 1970s to 30,000 today, as a result of the trade ban. Patrick Omondi of the Kenya Wildlife Service said the decision to allow some trade to Japan meant elephant numbers were once again starting to fall.

"Even discussing the possibility of trade leads to poaching," he said. "Our borders are porous. Without a total ban it is impossible to stop poachers taking our elephants."

He argues that the elephants are vital to the tourism industry in Africa.

"Tourism brings a lot of revenue to Africa and elephants are the keystone species," he said. "Eco-tourism can benefit poor African communities."

Different African countries, facing different political and economic situations, have tackled ivory trade and elephant conservation in different ways. Central and eastern African countries currently face the greatest difficulties handling illegal elephant poaching, said Omondi.

But critics warn that money from eco-tourism in Kenya is unlikely to go back to poor communities.

"In Kenya tourism is usually privately owned," said Michael ’t Sas Rolfes, a conservation economist based in South Africa. "The money rarely goes to the government and certainly not to the people working at the wildlife park."

He said that the problems to be tackled in many states with elephants were far greater than ivory poaching. Poverty, conflict and corruption mean that investing money in wildlife protection was not a priority for large parts of Africa.

Most legal exports of ivory now come from South Africa, where wildlife reserves and the elephants themselves are considered private property. Sas Rolfes said that this gave people a financial incentive to keep animal stocks at a healthy level.

"The animals are treated the way game stock is in many parts of the EU," he explained. "Some owners allow hunting, while some opt to stop killing the animals and benefit from eco-tourism."

"Increasingly, African countries are starting to look at the South African example,"he said.

Julian Morris of free-market think-tank the International Policy Network said that developing countries should be allowed to benefit from their ivory resources. "This kind of [anti-trade] action is blocking development," he said. "It is undermining the ability of the poor to escape poverty."

EU member states, which each have a vote, must try to agree a common position on CITES trade issues, including the ivory ban. If no position can be agreed at next month’s meeting the EU members will abstain from voting again. Mikael Conny Svensson of IFAW said that member states did not have to give their position on the ivory ban publicly at CITES, making it impossible to know how much European support the ban was likely to win next month.

The Nordic countries, the Netherlands and the UK have traditionally been most strongly opposed to ivory trade, while southern European countries have argued that a partial lifting of the 1989 ban is possible.

A European Commission official said that the EU was waiting for information from all the African elephant range states before deciding its position on ivory trade. The range state input is usually given just before the CITES meeting.

The EU is under pressure to change its stance on the trade in ivory, ahead of an international meeting on endangered species.