CITES (2): Discarded Their Mission

The first post in this series presented a broad statement that CITES has shamefully failed in its stated vision and mission to protect endangered species. As a (hopefully unintended) consequence it had also caused the proliferation of poaching of elephant and rhino and lion; it assisted - and to this day contrary to its mission indirectly assists the illegal trade in products from these species.

Discarding its mission

The vision and mission of CITES is summarised in its “Charter” - in which the organisation accepts that “peoples and states are and should be the best protectors of their own wild fauna and flora”. This is the baseline mandate according to which CITES projects and promotes its ongoing existence. It however refuses to apply this basic premise within its decision making process. Member states who are home to and protect the habitat of their large numbers of wild game like South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Tanzania are not allowed by CITES to act as the best protectors of their own fauna and flora. This must stop.

The argument is made by the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) that countries who are home to large numbers of wildlife in pristine habitat areas should have a weighted vote and carry the final decision and responsibility about what the endangered level of any species should be in their own countries.

These countries and their peoples have been managing these natural resources exceedingly well since after the colonial plundering. Relative to what wildlife habitat and species were during Colonial Rule, South Africa and the other countries of the SADC have been dramatically successful in their conservation plans and actions to restore the original wildlife habitat - and thence the species natural to that habitat.

CITES simply opposes these management principles and standards. Instead of experts it employs apparently random individuals from the USA, Switzerland and England to decide which species in these countries should be on the danger lists tabulated in Appendices I and II. These decision makers usually solicit northern Africa countries who have no, or very little game just in order to obtain a majority vote for their agendas. The votes from South Africa and the other game rich countries regarding the not endangered status of the fauna and flora in their own countries are totally ignored. This action of ignoring their own charter in order to promote certain listings with a dubious agenda makes the CITES processes and decisions and enforcement not only immoral but indeed illegal. This situation can not be allowed to continue.

Pushback

CITES cannot be allowed to dictate to any country how its communities may or may not co-exist with its natural environment, but that is exactly what it does. Particularly South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania have rich natural resources – including wildlife species. Particular species may even be - and in fact are risks to human settlement. That often welfare interaction can only be managed by the environmental authorities of the individual country. CITES does not have the knowledge or resources or mandates to carry out the management decisions and functions embedded with local knowledge, traditions and management strategies. This rude style of CITES needs to be shown up for what it is: It is nothing but a display of an arrogant neo-colonialist unconcern for the uppity natives of the SADC countries.

At the end of the 18th CoP Tanzania delivered the closing statement on behalf of the 16 countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). In this missive these 16 countries – home to many signature species such as lion, rhino, elephant and giraffe – threatened to withdraw from the treaty altogether. Tanzania at the time said that the voting process within the CITES cadre was unjust. Their criticism was pointed: “Today CITES discards proven, working conservation models in favour of ideologically driven anti-use and anti-trade models. Such models are dictated by largely Western non-State actors who have no experience with, responsibility for, or ownership over wildlife resources”.

Indeed. The CITES style has become nothing else but a vehicle for particularly the USA to - in a neo-colonialist manoeuvre - grab control of the management of the natural resources of Southern Africa.

The time has come for the Southern Africa countries with their huge resources of very well managed wildlife species to turn their backs on CITES. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity determines that individual states “have the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental policies”. That is really overstating the obvious and needed not to even have been said by this Convention. Salient facts in Southern Africa show that CITES has identified itself to be exactly in opposition to this axiomatic principle.

Historically, 63% of the approximately 2 200 decisions CITES has considered in its 37-year existence were proposed by only four countries: the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Switzerland and Australia. Most of these decisions had affected Southern Africa where an exceedingly low number of species are endangered. This lopsided action plan must be understood for what it is: The organisation is being dominated by the Global North in order to decide what individual countries in the Southern Hemisphere, and particularly Southern Africa may or may not do with their natural wildlife resources.

The present conference: either a do-over or a walkout

At the present CoP19 an agenda item was proposed by Botswana and Zimbabwe that CITES should formally either give states the power to veto those decisions that they do not agree with - or alternatively have their votes weighted considerably heavier than those of countries who have no direct interaction with the species under consideration.

If the SADC countries do not stand by this principle it will mean that by default they agree to CITES having custodianship over their wildlife resources. At least for South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia failure by CITES to adopt this change in its modus operandi will probably have the result that all the SADC countries will divorce themselves completely from this organisation.

In this motion Botswana and Zimbabwe argued that when making decisions about changes to Appendices I and II of the Convention where species are specified that will be restricted or prohibited for any form of international trade then the number of votes assigned to member states shall be proportionate to the population size of the relevant species under that state’s jurisdiction. This is a general principle of not only financial conglomerates but also embedded in the principles of the UN.

Pointedly Botswana and Zimbabwe said: “The voting rules are currently not assisting in addressing conservation challenges and implications on affected parties, including local communities. Countries whose ecosystems and human lives are suffering due [to] overabundance of these species or animals should have a bigger voice in decision making and this should be reflected in having more votes. Countries which have healthy and sometimes overabundant populations beyond ecological carrying capacity of specific species listed under either Appendix I or II have been victims of the current voting procedures removing incentives to conserve such species”.

As we speak this motion was declined by CITES. The CITES Secretariat arrogantly recommended that Cop19 not adopt the Rule 26 amendments proposed by Botswana and Zimbabwe on the superficial grounds that it would conflict with the basis on which the United Nations operates. This basis for pooh-poohing the motions is devoid of substance as will be pointed out later. That arrogant response was not where the CITES Secretariat stopped. They went further with even more yuck speak:

“The proposed system of voting shares is more used in corporate law and corporate governance where shareholders have a say depending on the number of shares they have”’, and then went even further: “Given the level playing field established by the principle of ‘one country, one vote’, the proposed amendment to Rule 26 would contradict this principle”.

The reader should re-visit the last two statements and understand what nonsense Southern Africa has to endure from the arrogant neo-colonialist voices in power behind this organisation:

1. The systems of voting shares is more used in corporate governance where shareholders have a say depending on the number of shares they have. Indeed. South Africa alone has 23,000 rhino shares and 20,000 elephant shares and 30,000 giraffe shares and 8,000 lion shares in this global organisation. Botswana and Namibia and Zimbabwe and Tanzania have tens of thousands more – in fact severe overpopulations. The USA and the UK and Switzerland have zero shares - and yet they lobby other no-share holders to collude and outvote South Africa and Botswana and Zimbabwe and Namibia and Tanzania on the one-country one-vote principle. What nonsense.

2. Given the level playing field established by the principle of 'one country, one vote’, the proposed amendment to Rule 26 would contradict this principle.

A level playing field? When member states are overruled by countries with no populations and therefore no interest at all in the species under consideration? What nonsense. As an operator within the self regulated South Africa professional hunting environment I am almost ashamed to know that this arrogance by CITES has been accepted or merely shrugged of for so many years. The time has come for a better approach.

The question needs so be asked what the not-so-hidden agenda of CITES is with these illicit actions. That will be addressed in the following missive about the opposing USA and African approaches to wildlife management.