IELP Goes to The Hague to Protect Endangered Species

Professors Chris Wold and Erica Thorson of the Law School's International Environmental Law Project (IELP), and six Lewis & Clark law students are in The Hague, Netherlands helping the 171 member governments make decisions to protect species from overutilization due to international trade. They are participating in the meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the third CITES meeting in a row in which IELP students have participated. IELP will provide daily reports from the meeting, which takes place June 3-15.

"This is great opportunity for our students to see how international environmental law is made, especially at a CITES meeting where decisions are taken by vote as well as by consensus," Prof. Thorson said.

IELP expects to be in the middle of the fight over ivory trade. Kenya and Mali have proposed a 20-year moratorium on ivory trade. Although many countries have voiced concern that a moratorium violates the rights of the member governments to make decisions concerning trade in species, IELP disagrees. Prof. Wold, in a letter to all CITES delegates, wrote that "the moratorium is no different from other rules of the Convention that interpret the Parties' rights and obligations." Indeed, the Parties already have a de facto moratorium on trade in whale products. In addition, Botswana has proposed trade in African elephants to "appropriate and acceptable destinations." Bethany Cotton, a second-year IELP member who drafted a legal opinion on the definition of this phrase, commented that "Elephants are clearly being exported to inappropriate destinations and I look forward to working with governments to ensure that CITES does not encourage such trade."

Despite the excitement caused by the proposals to protect specific species, such as slow loris and spiny dogfish shark, IELP will focus on implementation and compliance mechanisms that may affect the convention for years to come. For example, IELP continues to work on the development of a formal compliance regime for CITES. Prof. Thorson began working on the CITES compliance regime while still a third-year IELP member in 2004 and hopes to see her efforts to completion at this meeting. Prof. Thorson commented, "This is the classic lawyer's issue that gets almost no attention from delegates and environmental groups, yet is essential to the effectiveness of CITES."

IELP will work on other "lawyer's issues," including the use of measures that are stricter than CITES itself. Colin Olivers, a second-year IELP member, helped draft a legal opinion on the use of "stricter domestic measures" in preparation for the meeting. He said, "Countries use a range of stricter domestic measures to limit exports and imports of wildlife. While the Parties have the legal right to use stricter domestic measures, identifying when they should use them is a more difficult question to answer." In addition, Indonesia has proposed that the proceeds from sales of confiscated wildlife return to the country of origin of the wildlife. Natasha Bellis, another second-year IELP member who helped prepare IELP's position on this proposal, noted that Indonesia’s proposal "creates a huge disincentive for enforcing wildlife protection laws prior to export. It is also fundamentally inconsistent with property law concepts in many countries."

Links

CITES Secretariat
Species Survival Network