THURSDAY, 4.30PM
SOUTHERN African states seeking a reversal of the Cites ivory trade ban scored a tactical victory on Wednesday when a procedural committee approved the continued use of secret ballots in votes no motions proposed at the conference in Harare of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
The decision has led to confidence that all 12 Southern African Development Community member states will close ranks in support of the motion when it is put to the vote next week. It was agreed last year that SADC members would maintain a common position on the proposal, but several countries, including Zambia, Tanzania and Mauritius were later reported to have got cold feet.
Greenpeace and other environmental groups had earlier demanded restoration of open voting at the Cites conference. Concerns were expressed that this would lead weaker countries to follow the voting leads of stronger countries out of fear of repercussions such as loss of aid.
Meanwhile, an International Fund for Animal Welfare report on Thursday accused Japan of using its economic dominance to bribe weaker nations to support its whaling policies, and was now applying its strategy on other wildlife issues, such as the ivory trade, to support its agenda.
Report author Lesley Sutty said Japan had systematically targeted countries in the South Pacific, Latin America and Africa, offering multi-million dollar grants and soft loans.
“Although Japan and the recipient governments usually deny that there are strings attached to the aid received, records show that multi-million dollar grants of fisheries aid to developing countries repeatedly coincide with their support for Japan in certain international fora where whaling and fishery issues are deliberated,” said Sutty, an environmentalist from the Caribbean.
She said having seen its technique succeed in staving off anti-whaling measures in the 1980s and early 1990s, Japan had now extended it to elephants. Sutty said Southern African countries such as Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia, which had presented proposals to Cites for the downlisting of the African elephant, had been recipients of Japanese largesse. “About $500-million, has been given over the last 10 years to these countries in grants and soft loans,” she said. She said Japan, with a potentially huge and lucrative market for ivory, supported the downlisting of elephant by Cites.