I went to Geneva the week before last to the Standing Committee of the Convention on Trade in Endangered Speices (CITES ). My first one, it was an interesting insight into how politics affects the survival of a species. Interesting but not impressive.
For the EIA website I wrote a blog (yes, blogs coming out of my ears). Here is the text:
Wednesday 4th October 2006
'Out of the frying pan – into the pot'.
EIA investigator, Justin Gosling, reports on the politics of tiger conservation.
Just over a month ago I was carrying out field investigations for our Tiger Campaign. The day-to-day, minute-by-minute decisions, which can affect an operation and more critically, the safety of the operatives, were foremost in my mind, not least because there was so much at stake.
The expectations of EIA’s supporters for us, on their behalf to
make a difference to the dire situation for
wild tigers only increased
the pressure on the team. I vividly remember one day undercover
photographing hundreds of people wearing tiger and leopard skin whilst
they talked and laughed with police officers and army soldiers clad in
riot gear. The consequences had I been discovered were severe, but this
evidence gathering was essential in order to effect the future of the
illegal trade in big cat skin.
Here in Geneva at the 54th CITES Standing Committee I could not be further away from the world of clandestine investigations and dangerous traders. But this is where those investigations really matter. It is here that the representatives from the Parties to CITES meet to discuss the business of the Convention and where critical decisions on trade bans and stockpile sales are made.
Our latest report “Skinning The Cat – Crime and Politics of The Big Cat Skin Trade” has been the source of heated interest amongst our friends in other NGO’s and understandably within those who we criticised in the report, primarily China. The report is the product of two years of challenging investigations and disturbing revelations into the continuing skin trade.
If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, it evidences how the trade in tiger and leopard skin continues to flourish with skins from India travelling across Nepal into China. Undercover investigators were offered a number of skins, some openly on sale in shops in Lhasa, TAR, Linxia, Gansu Province and Kanding in Sichuan Province.
To dowload a copy of our report, please click on this link: www.eia-international.org/cgi/reports/reports.cgi?t=template&a=129
The lack of enforcement to stop the trade is one of our prime concerns and the authorities in the consumer states are understandably defensive. So much so that on Monday a member of the Chinese delegation took thirty copies of our report 'Skinning The Cat' and threw them into a rubbish skip. My surveillance skills were put to effective use as I followed him, photographed the evidence and retrieved the reports so that they could be ‘recycled’ and put in the hands of concerned individuals.
These are the lengths that some individuals will go to in an attempt to prevent the findings of EIA’s tenacious investigators being revealed to the decision makers within CITES.
As I write this, the conference is debating species-specific issues including elephants and tigers. The tension is high as EIA along with a number of other respected and influential NGO’s are poised to deliver a joint intervention to the conference in relation to issues concerning enforcement activities by tiger range states and consumer countries. We wrote the statement over the last few days and finalised it in a Mexican restaurant last night. The language is spicy but the detail is critical and we deliberated over it until late into the evening.
This may not be the front line for endangered species, but it is most certainly a battleground where tact, diplomacy and careful strategy are essential weapons in the ongoing fight to save the tiger.
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Tiger Intervention at CITES
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(The above post, and linked reports are copyright Justin Gosling/EIA. Photograph: Litang Festival 2006 - copyright Justin Gosling/EIA/WPSI)
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