Well well well. CITES CoP-15 is over. There have been a lot of tweets, facebook updates and newspaper articles about this, but as the dust settles, what has really happened?
Well for Asian big cats it is a bit of a mixed bag. On the upside there were some positive developments on enforcement. First, Parties agreed to set up a working group to develop an illegal wildlife trade database. EIA will be a part of this. This database should help with intelligence exchange and tracking performance on implementation of CITES. Other measures included a renewed emphasis on intelligence sharing between tiger range states, and calls for them to work more closely with the proposed International Consortium to Combat Wildlife Crime – ICCWC. This group is made up of Interpol, UN Office on Drugs and Crime, World Bank, CITES and the World Customs Organisation and aims to get wildlife crime treated as seriously as other forms of serious organised crime.
On the tiger farming front, things were a little more difficult. China put its foot down on the European Union’s attempts to strengthen previous resolutions on tigers and big cats. They managed present the EU’s initiative as outside interference (unfairly, since the EU was directed to do this by the Standing Committee). This, combined with a measure of bullying, ensured that the other range states were too weak to support the European Union.
In the end, a compromise was trashed out which managed to maintain most of the important bits of the EU’s proposal. Crucially, the decision on tiger farms, which says that tiger should not be bred for trade in their parts has survived – albeit in a weaker form and only definitely for the next three years. In any case, the message to countries was clear. This is China’s issue – back off.
So what now? Well the Year of the Tiger goes on, the efforts to investigate and expose the illegal wildlife trade go on, and so the campaign goes on. CITES is simply one tool. We will continue to work for better enforcement on environmental crime, and to expose the criminals who are wiping out endangered species. We will continue to do what we can to protect the forest which tigers and humanity depend on. Finally we will try and make sure that the next time CITES, or something similar comes around, that countries are willing to stand up and call for meaningful action.
Year of the Tiger 2010 