Rays of hope for Botswana and her elephant range neighbours have emerged ahead of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Conference of Parties (CoP) meeting in Panama, where several West African countries are pushing for a ban on the country’s elephant trophy trade.
CITES is an international body binding 183 states to agreements on the trade and protection of endangered plants and animals. The upcoming CoP19, to be held in Panama in November, is CITES’ highest decision-making meeting held every three years where countries frequently clash over proposals to tighten or loosen trade in various animal and plants.
The four West African states and Syria want CITES to upgrade elephants in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe from Appendix II to Appendix I, the highest level category for endangered species which would prohibit international trade for commercial purposes.
The proposal would slash incomes from the trophy hunting industry in the country, where elephant quotas are the hunting season’s drawcard, eroding the revenues operators and communities earn each year. The Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) estimates that communities earned P30 million from this year’s hunting season, allowing the different trusts to push these revenues into various empowerment ventures that help the incomes of those living with species such as elephants.
This week, CITES secretariat released its final recommendations on the 52 proposals member states will be debating in Panama when the CoP starts on November 14, indicating that the arguments provided by Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea, Mali, Senegal did not hold water.
“The information provided in the supporting statement does not indicate that any of the four Loxodonta africana (African bush elephant) populations that are the subject of this proposal underwent marked declines in their populations in the wild,” the secretariat noted.
“The populations of Loxodonta africana of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe are not small, and the area of distribution of the species in the four range states is not restricted and their populations have not undergone a marked decline.
“The secretariat recommends that the proposal be rejected.”
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.
The West African states’ persistence has raised speculation about the bloc’s motives. At present, CITES observes a split-listing for African elephants which recognises that the smaller forest elephant in West Africa is endangered due to years of unrestrained poaching, while populations of the bush or savanna elephant in the south are thriving especially in Botswana and Zimbabwe.
The persistence of the West African bloc has also given rise to the often-repeated allegations of expensive flights, fancy dinners, gifts and bribes paid by influential NGOs to African delegates in exchange for support against ivory trade proposals.
Lobbying for and against the various proposals ahead of the Panama showdown has also reached fever pitch. Analysts told Mmegi that while the secretariat may provide its recommendations, decisions ultimately rest with the delegates who cast their votes and come under the influence of the various lobbyists who hold divergent views on the proposals. CITES proposals typically require two-thirds majorities to pass and certain regions such as the European Union vote as a bloc, in this case representing 26 influential votes.
DWNP director, Kabelo Senyatso told Mmegi there was a reason the West African nations kept going after the elephants in Southern Africa.
“It’s because they are emboldened by the support that they get particularly from the Western NGOs,” he said in an interview on the sidelines of a recent workshop to finalise the country’s position for Panama.
“It’s in the interest of the Western NGOs because for them they use these events to fundraise and so there’s quite a number of them and you can check in various scientific publications to appreciate how much is mobilised by these NGOs and how much is invested in Africa vis-à-vis in marketing, PR and all else that they are doing.”
Senyatso added: “It’s in their interests really for those NGOs to ensure that they mobilise their constituents.
“It’s not so much about the African governments but it’s actually about the constituents of these NGOs in Europe and the US because they are providing the funding and in turn, these NGOs then sponsor these proposals for some of our fellow Africans, which is regrettable but it is how things are.”
Botswana and the region however, have also attempted to push back against the anti-hunting lobbyists. Ahead of the Geneva CoP in 2019, President Mokgweetsi Masisi lobbied both Angola and Kenya to not oppose Southern Africa’s proposals for a once-off sale of ivory stocks. The effort was ultimately unsuccessful.
This time around, the country has focussed its canvassing around influential voting blocs, “friendly forces” and specific proposals.
Besides fighting off the West African onslaught, Botswana and its neighbours are again 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.
In its recommendations this week, the CITES secretariat has partly accepted the proposal but rejected certain clauses sought by the region. The once-ivory stockpile sale has been repeatedly rejected in previous CoPs and is among decisions dealing the most frustrations to the regional elephant range states who argue that the cost of maintaining the ivory stockpiles up to CITES’ safety standards is prohibitive, while the revenues could help conservation.
“It’s important that we be allowed to do so because maintaining the stockpile takes away resources from other opportunities that Botswana could be exploiting,” Senyatso said.
One ray of hope for the region is a proposal by Zimbabwe that CITES should change its processes so that countries that feel the weight of conserving certain species should have greater weight attached to their votes, than countries that do not. In essence, the one-country/one-vote system should be reconstituted so that countries actually dealing with any particular species have a greater voice in the voting around that species.
“We met as Southern Africa to discuss CITES and our ministers challenged us to say why is that countries that don’t have elephants are dictating to us how we should be managing these,” the DWNP director told Mmegi.
“We put together a proposal to say CITES should reflect on its procedures to perhaps amend and that one is not about elephants, but a general principle.
“This is to say perhaps it should be amended to say that countries that support a large proportion of the species are allowed more weight or their vote should carry more weight than those that don’t.
“For instance, we are landlocked and don’t have sharks. Really if there’s a proposal on sharks, why should Botswana be very vocal and perhaps to the detriment of a country that has sharks?
“It’s the same principle to say CITES should reform its processes to allow countries that hold particular species to be the ones that are allowed to have a greater say.”
Former DWNP director, Cyril Taolo said the region did not ‘realistically” expect the proposal to pass, but it was a question of testing the waters and raising the issue to ensure that debate begins.
“When proposals are put forward, often the ones who are making all the efforts to conserve the species find themselves struggling to put their arguments across because those who are more vocal come with the support of the anti-trade and the votes go against any proposal put forward,” he told the recent the CITES preparation meeting.”
Analysts expect that proposals to change the process will be roundly rejected, as powerful voting alliances will argue that any changes to the vote weighting system would interfere with the science that is supposed to lead all decisions at CITES. Countries with superior scientific evidence may find their contributions limited because they do not necessarily have the species being debated.
Between the secretariat’s recommendations, the seedy dealings on the sidelines of the meeting and the battle for influence in Panama, Botswana and her neighbours have a mountain to climb in Panama.
