CITES is an international body binding 184 states to agreements on the trade and protection of endangered plants and animals.
The upcoming Conference of Parties (CoP) is CITES’ highest decision-making meeting held every three years where countries frequently clash over proposals to tighten or loosen trade in various animals and plants.
Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea, Mali, Senegal as well as Syria want the upcoming meeting of CITES starting on November 14 in Panama to upgrade elephants in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe from Appendix II to Appendix I, the highest level category for endangered species where no trade is allowed.
At the last CITES CoP in 2019, the four West African states unsuccessfully lobbied for the same proposal, this time as part of a larger group which also included Nigeria, Niger, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, and Sudan.
Besides fighting off the West African onslaught, Botswana and its neighbours are also pushing for a once-off ivory sale of government-owned ivory stockpiles with the restriction that the funds are used for conservation initiatives. The last such sale took place in 2008 and before that, another sale was permitted in 1999.
Another proposal Botswana is fighting against seeks to list hippos on CITES Appendix I. While the animals are not included in Botswana’s annual hunting quota, local wildlife authorities believe it is important for the country to take a stand against efforts to tighten trade without supporting science.
Decisions at CITES are carried by a two-thirds majority and ahead of Panama, anti-hunting lobby groups have been canvassing heavily amongst African delegates and others to swing the vote against Botswana and its southern African allies.
This week, Wildlife and National Parks director, Kabelo Senyatso, told Mmegi the country had not been sitting back and watching the developments.
An advance team has already left for Panama, while back home, officials are engaging with diplomats and other actors to secure support at CITES.
Senyatso said work has been ongoing for some time.
“We have had engagements with the European Union where we had some discussions about what they were proposing vis-à-vis our thoughts and finding each other,” he told Mmegi. “We’ve done the spadework behind the scenes and we are quite positive that certainly for the key proposals relating to uplisting of elephants, we are quite confident that that will not make it. “We are also confident that the hippo one won’t make it but you can’t count your chickens before they hatch and so we continue to just ensure that we keep the messaging and the momentum until the votes are cast in Panama.”
Senyatso said rather than a scorched-earth method to lobbying ahead of CITES, Botswana had adopted a targetted approach to win over support.
“We are confident because there are certain thresholds that need to be met for proposals to be carried through, typically a two-thirds majority. “What we would do is to look at a particular proposal and look at who the ‘friendly forces’ are. “We look and see if we have that friendly force with us, how many votes do they bring? “If you take the case of the EU, it's already 26 votes and if you are able to convince the EU to see your point of view, you already have 26 votes. “Likewise, what is the Arab League saying, what about China, what about Japan, the US?”
He added: “Our approach is not to try and target all the parties within CITES and we don’t need to talk to all 183, but rather identify particular blocs that are aligned with us and in terms of that, we have made significant progress.”
Local wildlife officials have reportedly held meetings with the EU, US, and Japan and are hoping to secure support in Panama.
For Botswana and its neighbours, the Panama meeting is the culmination of years of putting proposals before CITES and watching these get roundly defeated by a well-organised lobby, frequently led by fellow Africans.
At the CoP in 2019, a group of 32 African states, known as the African Elephant Coalition and including countries such as Nigeria, Benin, Chad, Liberia, Ghana, Kenya, South Sudan, Rwanda and others, rallied against Botswana and its neighbours' proposal for a once-off sale of ivory stockpiles held by governments.
The resurgence of the proposal to uplist the elephants to Appendix I is yet another slap in the face.
“The implications are that presently we are allowed to trade in elephants, primarily through trophy hunting which is how our local communities get quotas and mobilise funding through that,” Senyatso said. “To give you an example, in the 2022 hunting season, they mobilised more than P30 million from trophy hunting. “The direct implication of the proposal to uplist would be that that income would dry up because if elephants are uplisted to Appendix 1, we would not be allowed to support the trophy hunting programme we currently manage.”
While the proposal to uplist is expected to suffer the same fate it did in 2019, the region’s request for a once-off sale of government-owned ivory stocks is unlikely to be approved. The majority of CITES members have strenuously rejected the proposals in the years it has appeared in the CoPs, with fears that any ivory sales would encourage poaching.
For Botswana and Zimbabwe, who are leading the proposal, the arguments in Panama will centre on proving that the 2008 once-off sale did not result in an increase in the poaching of elephants and that the funds generated all went to conservation as agreed.
“We have been allowed to do it before and so we have a track record of what we were able to do with that income,” Senyatso. “In the case of Botswana, we created a Conservation Trust Fund which is managed by the department. “Communities that live in the elephant range can apply for up to P1m out of that fund to do livelihood enhancement projects. “Some of them do cluster fencing, electrification of their fields, lodges, campsites and others.”
Whether the delegates in Panama will take the same view remains to be seen.
