By Gershom Ndhlovu
TOURISM, Environment and Natural Resources Minister Catherine Namugala recently described as immoral some international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and some countries for spearheading the rejection of Zambia’s proposal to downlist its elephant population from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of World Fauna and Flora (CITES) Appendix I to Appendix II for purposes of trade.
All trade in species listed under Appendix I is banned while limited trade is allowed for those listed under Appendix II. Namugala, who had led a Zambian delegation which comprised among others, the Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) acting Director General a Mr Jack Chulu and Chieftainess Chiawa, charged that some of the NGOs had never even been to Zambia and knew very little about the country for them to reject the country’s proposal to downlist the elephant population.
“What moral right do these organisations have to decide for us that elephants should continue terrorising villagers in Chiawa and other parts of Zambia?’’ Ms Namugala asked at a press briefing in Lusaka on her return from Doha (read earlier articles here and here).
One of the NGOs that lobbied against the downlisting of elephants in Zambia and Tanzania, the two countries that applied for the action so that they could sell their ivory stocks, was the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) whose executive director, Mary Rice, is no stranger to Zambia.
“My guess is that they are looking for anyone to blame at the moment; certainly I think the ‘immoral’ NGO comment is directed at EIA. When I met with the Minister briefly at CITES she accused me/EIA of being malicious liars etc (because of the report and the accompanying footage/evidence),” Ms Rice said in e-mail correspondence with this writer.
“I think the bottom line is that the Zambia delegation was very confident that it would get its down listing – and certainly in the early stages of the meeting – its sale as well. The Panel of Experts Report for Zambia was, as you may know, glowing and had it not been for the EIA report and the evidence provided to decision makers, I believe it would have gone through.
“I actually did think they would get the down listing – all the rhetoric about poor villagers, children not being able to get to school because of too many elephants, widows looking after children,” said Ms Rice whom I first met in Zambia in 1991 when I worked for the Anti-Corruption Commission Species Protection Department.
Ms Rice said there were major contradictions between what the official Zambia line was and that being presented by EIA “- enough to put doubt in the minds of the decision makers (and let us not forget that Tanzania was also in this mix – what helped enormously from EIA’s point of view was that all the information/evidence we documented for Tanzania supported the ‘lies’ being put out in the press as well as the concerns of the Panel of Experts in Tanzania
“This made the argument against Zambia a lot stronger and gave more credibility to what was effectively a totally opposite view to that of the so called ‘experts’ and organisations/parties/people supporting the Zambia down listing – including WWF!). At the end of the day, the principle rationale behind their proposal is what failed – money. Whilst they may have tentatively met the criteria on population viability (but even this is questionable) they did not meet other criteria.”
In a detailed report entitled Open Season: The Burgeoning Illegal Ivory Trade in Tanzania and Zambia, the EIA noted that despite a commitment at the XIV Conference of Parties or CoP14in 2007 that there would be no further proposals to downlist their elephant populations, Tanzania and Zambia both submitted proposals to not only downlist their elephant populations but to also sell their respective legal ivory stockpiles at the CoP15 early this year.
This notwithstanding EIA undercover investigations in January and February this year, like previous investigations, pointed to widespread availability of illegal ivory at both domestic and international level in both Tanzania and Zambia.
“The findings of these investigations point to widespread availability of illegal ivory at both a domestic and international level in both countries. There are also allegations of complicity by the relevant authorities as well as widespread involvement of Chinese and other Asian nationals. The authorities appear unwilling, or unable, to exercise control, and EIA has reason to believe that government officials are implicated in the poaching and international trade of illegal ivory,” the report reads in part.
The report states that “one of the largest single ivory seizures since the ivory trade ban (6.2 tonnes seized in Singapore) occurred in 2002, subsequently shown by DNA analyses to have originated almost entirely from Zambia; a six tonne ivory consignment was shipped from Zambia and seized in the Philippines in late 2005, but subsequently disappeared; and another large consignment, which was confirmed to be of Zambia origin, was intercepted by Singapore authorities in 2008.
“The seizures made are clearly linked to organised crime,” concludes the report.
The report further states that a variety of sources in Zambia report that the poaching of elephants has been on the increase in recent years which the proposals (for downlisting the elephant) failed to provide detail for. The report quotes the ZAWA Director General telling the BBC last year that “We are seeing poaching of elephants being a problem now. It would appear that there is a market that has been created. We are seeing a lot of ivory actually being taken to the Far East. The reason actually is that countries like Japan and China have been allowed to buy ivory. People seem to make use of that kind of authorisation where now illegal activities are taken place.”
The EIA report further stated that despite a ban on domestic sale, ivory is easily obtainable and available in volume. EIA investigations, however, found that Zambia has both a thriving illegal domestic market and is also at the centre of international ivory trade.
The report states that in many cases, Zambian illegal ivory traders are even familiar with Mandarin (Chinese) words for ivory (xiangya) and rhino horn (xiniujiao).
