Delegates renew calls to leave CITES

Delegates to the ongoing KAZA 2024 Heads of State Summit in Livingstone, Zambia, renewed calls this week for member states to pull out of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (or CITES) which has repeatedly denied them permission to sell off their abundant ivory and other wildlife products.

The renewed calls for a mass-withdrawal from the 184 party CITES were made during panel discussions ahead of the arrival of presidents of the five southern African countries that make up this biggest conservation initiative in the world.

The delegates cited what in their view is an unreasonableness on part of the convention to maintain a blanket ban on ivory trade, thereby denying the five countries the benefit of monetising their huge elephant resources.

The Kavango-Zambezi Trans-Frontier Conservation Area (KAZA-TFCA) is a 520,000-square kilometre wildlife sanctuary straddling five southern African nations that share common borders along the Okavango and Zambezi river basins.

These nations — Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe — together with South Africa, are home to more than two-thirds of the African elephant population of about 450,000. These countries are part of the 19 African elephant range states, of which Botswana alone has an elephant population of 132,000, following by Zimbabwe at 100,000, while other sizeable numbers are in South Africa, Zambia, Namibia and Angola.

Dispute declared with CITES

The threat to exit CITES is not new. At the 19th meeting of the conference of Parties of the CITES that took place in Panama in 2022, the KAZA states and five other southern African countries that are also home to many elephants were pushing for the opening up of trade in ivory and other elephant products.

The huge elephant concentrations in a few countries in southern Africa are blamed for contributing to habitat loss and the growing incidents of human-wildlife conflict.

Besides, the southern African countries have always argued that monetising their wildlife resources would help them fund their conservation efforts. But — for the umpteenth time — this request was rejected by the CITES delegates. This refusal infuriated the African countries, resulting in the 10 countries declaring a dispute with CITES.

“The way CITES is currently operating is contrary to its founding principles,” the countries said in a statement they presented in Panama. The other countries are Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa and Tanzania.  

“Today CITES discards proven, working conservation models in favour of ideologically driven anti-use and anti-trade models,” the statement continued. “Such models are dictated by largely non-state actors who have no experience with, responsibility for, or ownership over wildlife resources. The result has been failure to adopt progressive, equitable, inclusive and science-based conservation strategies. We believe this failure has arisen from the domination of protectionist ideology over science decision in making within CITES.”

Renewed calls to quit CITES

Delegates to the Livingstone summit renewed the call for KAZA member states to pull out of CITES, citing unfair treatment.

Elly Hamunyela, director of Scientific Services in the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism in Namibia, raised the issue during a panel discussion on wildlife trade and law enforcement as she reflected on the CITES convention and its implications on partner members.

“Countries should be given rights to sell products like hides in light of the mortality of elephants,” she pointed out. “Our elephant population is big but we are not culling. What do we do with the products if we are not allowed to trade?”

In April, Zimbabwe’s minister of Environment, Climate Change and Wildlife, Sithembiso Nyoni told Parliament that the country was sitting on a 166-ton ivory stockpile made up of about 27,000 pieces collected from in and outside national parks over the years. The ivory is estimated to be worth about $700 million. The other countries also have various sizes of ivory stockpiles, the sale of which they say would bring in money that can go towards meeting their conservation costs.

“If we say CITES is not helping us, why are we still in the CITES convention?” Hamunyela asked. “We need to take decisive action and have a common position, not only in KAZA, but SADC (Southern African Development Community) as a whole,” she added.

An independent conservation biologist from Namibia, Dr Malan Lindeque told the meeting that he believes KAZA member states can afford to exit CITES without losing anything.

“I believe that nothing will change; it is futile to continue to submit proposals and make technical arguments when the opposition doesn’t want to hear that,” he said. “It needs political action, it is a political problem, it’s not a conservation problem, and it’s not a scientific problem. The strongest measure that SADC can make is to leave, but maybe not all countries because they are not all in the same situation.”

Lindeque, a former Permanent Secretary of Environment and Tourism in Namibia, said those member states with huge elephant populations and huge stockpiles of ivory and other wildlife products should leave CITES in order to make the strongest statement that they reject the current unfair regime.

“The decisions that are made are not based on science, the decisions are made on emotions, on populism and on politics and this is what has prevented SADC to legitimately trade in (its) natural resources. It has now become absolutely a fixed pattern in CITES that the rest of the world is comfortable with this status quo that there is no trade.”

Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authority (ZimParks) director general, Fulton Mangwanya, said the friction resulting from sharp disagreements within CITES is causing some states to lose trust in the convention resulting in the pull-out calls.

Zimbabwe turns east for trophy hunting exports

Meanwhile, Mangwanya revealed that in view of the increase in the number of Western countries banning the importation of hunting trophies into their jurisdictions, Zimbabwe is now actively looking for alternative markets for its trophy hunting exports.

In 2022, the European Parliament called for a total ban on the import of trophies derived from species listed as endangered under CITES. Belgium enforced the ban in February. In March, British lawmakers approved a ban on trophy hunting imports covering 6,000 endangered species.

“We can always come up with an alternative market,” Mangwanya told the media at the KAZA summit. “We have to look for other markets from the East,” he added, without mentioning specific countries. “We should be allowed to be hunting more so that we do the management of reducing these animals which are killing our people,” he added.