Should Southern Africa Care What UN Agency CITES Thinks or Does?
CITES should not be allowed to pick and choose its issues to try to stay relevant. It has already done so by focusing on the spread of zoonotic (animal) diseases as it did in the post-covid19 period.
Johannesburg, South Africa-“Has CITES — the Convention on International Trade In Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora — and its Geneva-based bureaucracy out-lived its relevance in Southern Africa?” quizzes Emmanuel Koro.
CITES has emerged since its establishment in 1975, as the world’s most authoritative environmental organisation mandated to regulate international wildlife trade. Its principal task is to ensure that international trade in wild animals and plants do not threaten the survival of the species.
But what if climate change — not poachers, criminals or collectors— were now the dominant danger to wildlife?
That would put CITES itself on the road to extinction. After all, the UN relies on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for all of its climate change-related decisions.
It is now time for the UNFCCC and CITES to end their toe-dance on jurisdiction.
“The greatest danger today to all wildlife is the impact of climate change,” a political observer in the United States, Mr Godfrey Harris, said in an interview this month.
“What CITES and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity do now just nibbles around the edges of the near-term well-being of endangered species.
“When will the world, and particularly its political leaders, recognise that CITES has become a bureaucratic obstacle to meaningful wildlife policy and a clear waste of time and money?”
Arguably, CITES should move with the times, and address climate change as the biggest current threat to wildlife. But it continues to deal with reality in this area as in so many others — “by virtually ignoring it.”
A brief review of recent statistical studies reveals that severe storms and droughts — leading to habitat loss, water and food scarcity — have been responsible for the die-off of wildlife worldwide. As others have noted, the loss of massive numbers of bees and butterflies, with its as yet unknown relationship to climate change, is just as serious as the loss of any number of rhinos and elephants.
Meanwhile, Mr Harris wonders whether the inability of the CITES Secretariat to find a member state to host the next CITES Conference of the Parties in 2025 could be another tell-tale sign that CITES has outlived its necessity.
Mr Harris, the American political observer who also serves as Managing Director of the Ivory Education Institute, has noted, “The CITES 19th CoP went to Panama because the current Secretary-General, Ivonne Higuero, comes from Panama and undoubtedly indicated to that country’s government how much of an international embarrassment it might be if they didn’t support her and her worldwide role.
“It probably wasn’t easy for her to convince Panama to put up the million dollars in sponsorship fees that CITES needs for each of its triannual conferences.”
With only about 18 months left before the next CoP meeting, no country has offered to host it. The CITES Secretariat has stated that if no country is willing to host its CoP 20 by 31 March 2024, it will be held in Switzerland.
“So,” Mr Harris mused, “One of the great CITES perks will be preserved whether it will do any good for wildlife or not.
“Bureaucrats and politicians concerned with CITES matters will still get a major international trip as their reward.
“The trip will be paid out of the CITES Treasury which in turn is either filled up periodically or greatly influenced annually by the major animal rights groups.”
He noted that the next CITES meeting “will be another 10 days dominated by the major Western powers congratulating themselves and the organisations they host on their carefully worded and ceaselessly vetted resolutions intended to benefit the well-being of endangered and threatened wildlife.”
Mr Harris continued, “In the meantime, the wildlife itself will suffer from the severe and growing impact of climate change, unseen and undealt with by the Western delegates to CITES and their animal rights supporters.
“Worse, this over-the-top, Kabuki-like performance will be helplessly watched by the governments in lands where most of the wildlife live.
“CITES is not moving with the times and keeps on doing what it has always done —little.
“Now, it is doing worse by not doing much for the challenges that climate change has brought.
“Besides, if CITES were to think of something to do, it is institutionally too slow to do much of consequence, suffering as it does from multiple over-sized committees and three-year lapses between definitive decision-making meetings.
“Who wants to play catch up? If you are concerned about wildlife, you need to be ahead of the potentially catastrophic changes that are now coming ever faster and in some cases have already occurred.”
Heavily impacted by climate change, together with their wildlife needs and the questionable CITES regulations, the inevitable question continues to pop up: Should Southern Africa care about what CITES thinks or does?
The hard-to-avoid answer is probably not. Moreover, Southern African countries have been forced to endure multiple rejection votes of proposals to resume international trade in ivory — something that might fund the cost of dealing with the effects of climate change — within the CITES framework.
After the 81% vote against the Southern African countries’ bid for the ivory trade in August 2019 at the CITES 18 meeting, what really can be expected to be done through this organisation?
Many SADC governments and their rural communities, who bear the brunt of co-existing with elephants without any benefits from the ivory trade, have already expressed their loss of hope in the CITES decision-making framework.
Former Botswana Minister of Environment and Tourism, now that country’s Ambassador to the U.S., his Excellency Onkokame Kitso Mokaila, dismissed the CITES voting process as “tainted, rigged and not free and fair.”
“Fraud and sold votes bought by the Europeans,” he said, describing how the CITES resolution on international trade in ivory was stolen in August 2019. “I am clearly flabbergasted, disgusted, demoralised, incensed and we totally have no faith in CITES whatsoever.”
Three months later, Southern African ministers of environment held a meeting in Tanzania and protested the CITES vote against ivory trade. They issued a statement that they were going on CITES reservations on ivory trade ban, one step away from exiting CITES.
The wildlife-rich and elephant-over-populated Southern African countries’ reservation statement was a formal declaration refusing to accept more of CITES’ unfair, harmful, and prohibitive trade rules dealing with wildlife and wildlife products.
But having made the declaration, nothing happened.
As Mr Harris noted: “CITES can do nothing for wildlife — or its member countries — that climate change won’t eventually threaten to tear asunder?”
Elephant over-populated and wildlife-rich Botswana, Eswatini, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe registered official reservations on the listing of specific elephant populations as endangered species and the prohibition of ivory trade. South Africa also protested the listing of their giraffes as endangered species.
“In its 45-year history, CITES has done nothing positive for Africa, its people or its wildlife,” said the CEO of South Africa-based pro-sustainable use NGO, True Green Alliance, Mr Ron Thomson. “The corrupt western animal rightist NGOs are using CITES to attack and to disallow Africa’s legal and honest ‘sustainable-use-of-wildlife’ aspirations. No respectable state wants to be part of this [organisation], the world’s biggest organised crime [group].”
At CITES CoP 19, the Southern African countries submitted a collective proposal to reopen what would have been a strictly controlled international trade in ivory. But it was again rejected, this time by the votes of more than 90%! of the nations in attendance. Again, the Southern African countries have done nothing about this insult to their sovereignty and their right to use their wildlife sustainably to ensure future economic well-being.
Many delegates of elephant-over-populated Southern African countries’ felt that CITES member countries’ continued rejection of their international trade in ivory trade proposal was “a punishment and not a reward for their conservation successes.”
Asked at a press conference what they would now do — now that their ivory trade bid had been overwhelmingly rejected by the CITES member countries — the Southern African countries’ delegates indicated that they would do nothing.
This was a sad show of their powerlessness within the CITES decision-making framework.
This again clearly raises the question: Should Southern African countries care about what CITES thinks or does?
“The answer is just as clearly a no,” said Mr Harris.
CITES should not be allowed to pick and choose its issues to try to stay relevant. It has already done so by focusing on the spread of zoonotic (animal) diseases as it did in the post-covid19 period.
Of course, many individuals involved with CITES at the time saw the Israeli-animal-disease initiative as a backdoor way to ban all trade in international wildlife. That resolution failed but given CITES' penchant to repeat, wash lightly, and repeat, don’t be surprised if the same type of resolution is considered in 2025.
It should be noted also that the CITES Secretariat concluded a Memorandum of Understanding with the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), focusing on critical areas of mutual interest. Neat. But why not do the same with the UNFCCC, regarding the threat of climate change to the well-being of wildlife?
Yet climate change is a bigger threat to wildlife survival than zoonotic diseases.
“We challenge CITES to come up with a definitive plan to deal with climate change before this year is out or cancel CoP 20,” said Mr Harris.
He added: “Simply put, CITES has to fish or get off the yacht. But if it has to abandon the yacht, at least it will be off the backs of countries that are more concerned by what their climates threaten to do to their wildlife, than by CITES trade regulations.”