29 African nations team up to ban ivory trade

Five proposals to CITES will give elephants highest protection under international law

The African Elephant Coalition (AEC), comprising 29 African countries with a shared commitment to ensuring the survival of the African elephant, will meet from 24 to 26 June in Montreux, Switzerland, to consolidate their position in the run-up to the 17th Conference of the Parties (CoP17) of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) in September-October in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Five complementary proposals submitted to CITES in late April by AEC countries, together with other co-proponents, provide an integrated package to protect elephants by strengthening international CITES law.

They include listing all elephants in CITES Appendix I, the closure of domestic ivory markets, the destruction of ivory stockpiles, ending the Decision-Making Mechanism for legalizing trade in ivory, and limiting the export of wild, live African elephants to conservation projects in their natural habitat.  Taken together, the proposals would put an end to the ivory trade and afford elephants the highest protection under international law.

Of the 29 countries represented in the Coalition, 25 of them are African elephant range States, comprising the majority (68per cent) of the 37 countries in which African elephants occur in the wild.

The package of five proposals is a decisive response to the poaching crisis facing African elephants over the last decade, caused by the legal sale of ivory stockpiles to China and Japan in 2008 with CITES permission.  At the height of the killing from 2010 to 2012, at least 100,000 elephants were killed in Africa for their ivory, many of them in AEC countries.

“A global, permanent ban on ivory trade is the only way to ensure the protection of elephants.  African countries in the AEC, which are losing their elephants to poachers every day, are blazing the trail to shut down the global ivory market and put an end to this senseless killing forever,” said Vera Weber, President of the Swiss-based Fondation Franz Weber, a partner organization of the AEC, which is facilitating the meeting in Montreux.

“The crisis facing the African elephant is still very real, and calls for a global unity of purpose.  It is critically important that CITES takes decisive action to ban international and domestic trade in ivory to save elephants from imminent extinction.  We are making a collective stand for the long-term survival of elephants throughout Africa and calling on the world to stand with us,” said Dr. Andrew Seguya, Executive Director of the Uganda Wildlife Authority.

The April submission to CITES followed the Cotonou Declaration released in November 2015 after an AEC meeting in Cotonou, Benin, in which the AEC countries reaffirmed their conviction that a “ban [on] international and domestic trade in ivory is essential for the long-term survival of the African elephant” and committed to “propose and support the listing of all African elephant populations in CITES Appendix I” and to “enact, implement and enforce legislation prohibiting domestic ivory trade and support all proposals and actions at international and national levels to close domestic ivory markets worldwide.”

The Coalition is expected to integrate the pre-launched campaigns, “WorthMoreAlive, #EndIvoryTrade,” to enhance their efforts to gain support for the five CITES proposals among other country Parties of CITES.  It is also expected to endorse the Twitter hashtags, #SupportAppendixI and #EndTrade, which are associated with the Global March for Elephants and Rhinos planned for dozens of cities across the globe on 24 September to coincide with the start of the CITES meeting.

“Our elephants are dying every day to meet the insatiable appetite of the ivory trade.  We are appealing for support in our mission to end the trade and for the world to join us in spreading the message that elephants are worth more alive than dead,” said Patrick Omondi, Deputy Director of the Kenya Wildlife Service.