eBusiness Weekly
Business Writer
Zimbabwe is making considerable progress in lobbying for lifting of the ban on global ivory trade, with some key stakeholders now warming up to support the country’s bid at the Conference of the Parties to CITES in Panama in November.
Zimbabwe, alongside other Southern African nations, is seeking to sell elephant tusks in a bid to raise funds to ramp up its conservation programmes and also to keep the population of the animal at sustainable levels to avoid human-wildlife conflicts.
The country has an estimated population of 100 000 elephant heads, more than double its holding capacity. CITES, the United Nations body imposed a global ban on ivory sales in 1989 to stem a wave of poaching. Since the ban, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia were only allowed to sell and their stockpiles in 1998 in a one of sale.
Zimbabwe has already warned that if it is not allowed to sell its 163 tonnes of ivory, estimated to be worth US$600 million, it may pull out of the CITES. Botswana also warmed it may pull out if it is not permitted to sell its elephants’ tusks.
Dr Emmanuel Fundira, a key member of Zimbabwe’s lobbying team told Business Weekly on Wednesday the lobbying process was becoming “friendlier and cordial.”
“I wouldn’t want to get into more details because of some of the issue are sensitive to discuss at the moment but we are very active and we are now getting a very fairly reasonable ear from the EU and African countries,” said Dr Fundira.
“We are seeing the positive signs of thawing relations and we will continue lobbying.”
Africa had always had a divided vote. Kenya and other members of the African Elephant Coalition, whose 32 members are mostly East and West African countries that have fewer elephants have been opposing southern Africa’s bid to engage in international trade of Ivory. In April, Zimbabwe, alongside Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia held an international Elephant Summit in an attempt to secure a unified voice to demand a legal international trade in ivory be reopened.
The event was to lay the groundwork that would allow them to sell off stockpiled ivory.
The main highlights of the conference deliberations included adopting a consensus that the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species should acknowledge the conservation efforts of southern African states and reward them by allowing the disposal of ivory stockpiles.
The summit resolved that domestic ivory trade should also be permitted, with the sovereignty of states and their rights to sustainable use of wildlife being respected.
The participating countries also emphasised the need to generate revenues through the sale of elephant and wildlife products by developing a viable instrument that would enable them to sell ivory stockpiles to raise funds for conservation, given that the CITES ban is depriving the sector of critical funding for conservation.
The conference also agreed on the need to harmonise policy and legislation and manage elephants as a collective unit across borders, through the promotion of Trans-frontier Conservation Areas, so that Africa speaks with one voice on the issue of elephant management. Zimbabwe has since adopted the summit resolutions.
Analysts say while Zimbabwe’s bid could now be receiving “attention” from the EU, challenges would arise when one member of the bloc decides not to support the bid.
“EU vote as a bloc and the decision has to be unanimous,” said an international relations lecturer with a local university.
“If one member decides not to (vote), then it becomes a problem.”
In May, Zimbabwe took the EU diplomats for a tour of its ivory vaults in Harare and made an appeal to the 28-member bloc to support its bid to sell off its elephants tusks.
During the tour, Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority director-general, Fulton Mangwanya, told EU ambassadors to Harare that the southern African country accumulated 163 000 tonnes of ivory and 67 tonnes of rhino horns.
“The burden of managing a stockpile that we cannot derive economic value, or plough back into the communities and conservation of the same species is quite a great pain to us” he said.
“We kindly request the support of the EU for Zimbabwe to be allowed a once off sale of our national ivory stock,” said Mangwanya.
He said if allowed, the funds would be used to benefit local communities living around animal conservancies.
In response the Swiss ambassador Niculin Jager, who spoke on behalf of the delegations said:
“Conservation and prevention of illegal wildlife trade is an international issue because of the involvement of criminal syndicates in illegal wildlife trade hence there is need to strengthen international co-operation.”
In a sign of growing frustration, Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister Mangaliso Ndlovu has already hinted that Zimbabwe pull of CITES is it nor allowed to sell its tusks.
He said the country would attend the next CITES meeting in November in Panama to present a strong position.
He said the country was willing to defend its position, even outside of CITES, suggesting that it may pull out.
“We are clear that we are not going to CITES to beg them.
“We are going to CITES to present our strong position, a position which we are willing to defend, even if it means being outside CITES,” he said.
“We are there in CITES to share our success stories for the benefit of those countries who want to also experience the successes in the conservation that we have experienced; not to be lectured on how we conserve our wildlife.
“We are left with limited choices. If this CITES is not decisive on this critical matter, we will be left with no choice but to go the culling way or maybe consider engaging our affairs outside CITES,” Minister Ndlovu added.
Conservations advocates, however, said Zimbabwe should “exhaust all avenues” before pulling out.
