IELP Goes to The Hague to Protect Endangered Species

May 31 - June 3, 2007

The Hague, Netherlands

Hey everyone, it’s Colin, your friendly blogger with an update of the last few days. First off, welcome to the IELP blog of CITES Conference of the Parties (COP) 14. Because I’m only going to be around for the first week, the other IELPers decided that I had to write some entries for this week.

We have been here for three days, but it feels like a lot longer because we have been going nonstop. Jason, Maura, and I flew out of Portland on Wednesday and arrived in Amsterdam on Thursday afternoon. The flight was long and we met up with Bethany in the airport. Bethany had quite the ordeal getting here; riding the train from D.C. to Baltimore, flying into LaGuardia and finding out that her connecting flight was leaving from J.F.K. and catching a cab during rush hour to get there ASAP, and then finding out that her computer screen had been broken somewhere between Portland and N.Y. We all decided to wait for Margo, who was supposed to get in six hours later, and headed into Amsterdam. We walked through the city to the Van Gogh Museum and Maura did a great job of keeping up with our pace in four inch heels. The Van Gogh Museum was great and we were all exhausted as we headed back to the airport. We waited for Margo for a while before heading to Den Haag without her in the hopes of finding that she had gotten in early and we had missed her. When we got to The Hague we caught a ride from a cab driver who told us that his boss had said he was too old to work at McDonalds and fired him. We all thought, "Wait . . . isn't there a law against that?" But apparently there isn’t in the Netherlands. The cabbie ultimately took us to the wrong apartment and we had quite the two and a half hour adventure roaming the streets of Den Haag before finally getting to the apartment. At the apartment we found Natasha, but found out that Margo had missed her flight and couldn’t change it without substantial fees which made it impossible for her to come. We were all bummed that Margo wouldn’t be able to make it, but she’ll have many more chances to attend a CoP hopefully.

Our first day we attended the Species Survival Network CoP boot camp. The SSN is a coalition of conservation groups, of which IELP is a member. The boot camp was an introduction to how CITES works, how to lobby at the CoP, and a brief introduction to the issues most of us will be working on for the next two weeks. It was great to meet many of the fine people working with SSN and starting to get in the mind frame of the CoP. That night we returned to the SSN hotel-which was extremely nice-and enjoyed some drinks while discussing the elephant and shark issues more deeply. On our way back to our fabulous apartment we stopped to pick up some groceries and enjoyed the adventure of how one shops in the Netherlands.

On Saturday we attended our first CITES event: the 55th Meeting of the Standing Committee. Our first introduction to CITES started with many procedural issues, but became more exciting as the parties disagreed over the trade of ivory. Japan was designated, with aggressive backing by the Secretariat, as a trading partner, paving the way for a sale of stocked ivory from Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. The meeting became heated as China also requested to be listed as a trading partner. The Secretariat refused to give a recommendation as to whether China could sufficiently regulate legal ivory trade while disallowing illegal trade. This sparked the Chinese delegate into a tirade on the perceived unfairness of the fact that both Japan and China had been considered as possible trading partners yet only Japan had ever seriously been discussed due to China’s size and other factors. However, the issue went to a vote before the Standing Committee and the vote ended in a six-six tie. Because of the tie, the issue was put to the decision of Switzerland, as the depository country, and Switzerland, in its historical diplomatic fashion, refused to cast a vote for China on account of a lack of sufficient consideration of the issue. Thus, while there will be a sale of ivory, it will only be to Japan, hopefully limiting the ability of poachers to intermingle smuggled ivory with legal ivory. However, many NGOs, and several parties, remain highly concerned about Japan’s abilities to exclude illegal ivory trade. After the meeting we discovered that it was Maura’s birthday, that Paula’s was tomorrow, and that Chris and Erica’s had both been on the 25th of May, we decided it was necessary to celebrate. We all went out to dinner at an Indonesian restaurant where we all ate way too much and returned home exhausted and needing to get up early again.

On Sunday we headed back over to the SSN hotel where we held some preliminary meetings on the economics of species conservation, export quotas for black rhinos and leopards, and whether CITES should play a more significant role in considering its effects on the livelihoods of the world’s poor. After these meetings we moved to the Conference Center for a strategy meeting on the proposals to list four timber species. In the afternoon we attended the opening ceremony, attended by most of the parties and NGOs, and finally got a feel for just how large and important the upcoming meeting will be. The Netherlands put on a cheesy, yet enjoyable opening ceremony with speeches, a laser light show, a singer, drummers, and curtain climbing acrobats. Following the opening ceremony was a reception which was a madhouse due to the number of people present in the Convention Center. Natasha, Bethany, and I returned to the apartment to relax, make dinner, and prepare documents for the start of the meeting while Paula returned to her hotel and Jason and Maura stayed behind to chat up the delegates of Uganda. Eventually Jason and Maura made it home and we enjoyed a delicious dinner before sitting down for yet more work in anticipation of the beginning of the CoP tomorrow. We look forward to the excitement of tomorrow, but already understand why Chris and Erica have always let us know how tiring these events can be. There is simply always interesting stuff going on and more work to do. Unfortunately that means enjoying Den Haag a little less, but we are at least happy that our extensive work is set in the beautiful backdrop of The Hague.

More in the coming days,

Colin

Links

CITES Secretariat
Species Survival Network