IFAW - International Found for Animal Welfare

BRIEFING FOR MEMBERS OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT - ELEPHANTS

Dear Member,

Background.

As you will recall, on June 12 in the course of the last Plenary Session, the European Parliament adopted by an overwhelming majority a resolution on the position to be adopted by the Community and the Member States in the context of the forthcoming meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Wild Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES) to be held in Harare, Zimbabwe, June 9-21 1997.

Amongst other things the Parliament's Resolution "urged the parties not to accept proposals from Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe to downlist the African elephant."

The European Parliament's Resolution was immediately faxed to CITES Secretary-General Topkov under cover of a letter from Doeke Eisma (a Dutch Liberal MEP and one of the sponsors of the Parliament's resolution). Mr Eisma asked Mr Topkov to ensure distribution to CITES delegations. IFAW representatives in Harare also received a copy of Mr Eisma's fax and at once gave it to the representatives of the European Commission in Harare with the request that it be distributed to EU Member States and, if possible, other CITES delegations.

The purpose of the s briefing note is to inform you that in spite of the clear position taken by the European Parliament only a few days earlier, Commission representatives nonetheless supported the final proposals for "downlisting" the African elephant.

IFAW believes the position adopted by the European Commission as regards elephants was wrong both on substantive and procedural grounds.

Why the Commission was wrong on substance.

As far as substance is concerned, the calamitous decline in elephant populations in Africa during the 1980s - from 1.7 million elephants to around 800,000 - owed much to killing and poaching to meet the demands of the ivory trade. Opening up the legal ivory trade again will only lead to renewed pressure on both the African and the even more threatened Asian elephant (current population around 50,000), since there are no reliable and practicable methods of distinguishing legal from illegal ivory and currently no effective controls in the exporting or importing countries.

The danger is that ivory from all over Africa will now be sucked into southern Africa and given a spurious legitimacy. Other ivory, including Asian ivory, will find its way direct to Japan where the registration system is notoriously lax and the demand virtually inexhaustible. And does anyone really suppose that ingenious Japanese entrepreneurs, to use a polite word, will not find a way of ensuring that ivory imported into Japan under the deal voted through this week in Harare will not somehow be re-exported to the even wider Asian market of China, Korea, Taiwan etc?

Conservation and animal welfare groups who opposed downlisting have never argued that local communities should not benefit from elephants and other wildlife. Tourism certainly brings far greater revenues to Africa than the sale of ivory ever will. The maintenance of abundant and wellmanaged elephant populations brings its own rewards without necessarily implying a resumption of the ivory trade.

Why the Commission was wrong on procedure.

As far as the elephant issue was concerned, before the Harare meeting the European Commission had made no proposal for a common position of the Member States except for a "wait and see" policy with key decisions to be taken on the spot by its representatives. This attitude did not appear to have changed significantly even after the adoption by the Parliament of its resolution of June 12, 1997.

We know of no evidence that the Commission was collectively involved in the decision taken by Commission representatives to propose to EU member states in Harare that the EU should support the elephant downlisting proposals when this matter came up for a vote on Thursday June 19, even though the question of downlisting elephants was clearly of enormous and indeed worldwide political significance. It is not even clear to us that the responsible Commissioner or Commissioners gave explicit authority for the proposals which were made in the Commission's name.

Finally, as we understand it, the United Kingdom government, as well as those of France, Germany and Austria, would have voted in Harare on June 19 against the downlisting of the African elephant. Because the Commission's proposals in favour of downlisting did not receive the support of the necessary majority of the EU member states, EU countries including countries who would have voted against - were forced to abstain en bloc in the crucial vote.

We believe that had the Commission followed the opinion of the European Parliament, a majority of Member States could have been found in favour of maintaining the Appendix I listing and that the outcome of the final vote, where a two-thirds majority in favour of downlisting was required, might have been different.

Conclusion.

We believe that in the interests of transparency the European Commission should be invited to publish the specific proposals made by the Commission in Harare on the elephant issue.

We further believe that as far as future CITES meetings are concerned the Commission's proposals for a common position of the member states should be communicated to the Parliament well in advance of the CITES meeting and that the views of the European Parliament should be taken into account as part of the decision-making procedure.