IELP Goes to Thailand to Protect Endangered Species

October 4, 2004

Bangkok, Thailand

(Brenda) The afternoon in Committee II primarily involved “housekeeping.” CITES CoPs act in one of two ways: creating a Decision or creating a Resolution. A Decision is a recommendation or mandate that is intended to be in force for only a short period of time and then end once the recommendation or mandate is accomplished. A Resolution involves ongoing actions that will last for years. In an effort to ensure that Decisions and Resolutions adhere to the appropriate timeframes, the Secretariat proposed to move verbiage from several older Decisions into existing and new Resolutions, as appropriate. The result was a 13-page table of the existing and proposed text. I have to say, it’s just about as exciting as it sounds! Apparently, I’m not the only one to think so. Based on comments from Parties, or rather the lack of comments from anyone but the United States, most Parties did not even read the document.

(Debby) Rather than describe the issues covered in Committee II in the morning, I’d like to take this space to discuss the personal drama angle of a day at CITES. After saying I was going to get fried dough from street vendors every single morning, I finally did on the way to the Metro today. Mmmm…street doughnuts. Really good. In the morning at Committee II, we were all photographed by a Japanese fellow with a tag that read “Press Japan.” Apparently the Japanese often document and photograph NGOs at CITES, just so they know who is out there and what the competition is. It was a strange situation – you feel a bit weirded out about being on a Japanese hit list, and yet kind of flattered that you are dangerous enough to be noticed. The highlight of the evening was the EU reception. Erica and I shared a cab ride with delegates from Malawi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (very friendly!), ate a lot of really good cheese, and bonded with the all-female delegation from Madagascar. We love the Madagascar delegation! Not only are they sponsoring proposals for listing of geckos, sea turtles, and snakes, but they know how to have a jolly good time.

CITES is not just reception after reception—people work and work and no one sleeps. For IELP one of the important issues has been enforcement and compliance with CITES. On Wednesday, Debby, Chris, and I attended a working group meeting with all sorts of delegates working on drafting compliance guidelines. Chris spoke on our behalf and suggested many things that would strengthen the document. Debby and I worked hard putting our comments into text, which we are going to turn into the working group. Hopefully, our comments will lead to some changes in the document and CITES will continue to employ strong compliance mechanisms. Today, in Committee II, enforcement issues should arise, and we hope that the Parties will largely support a document put forth by Kenya, which attempts to initiate regional cooperation and national action plans, among other things. SSN has been working hard lobbying for support, so we shall see how it goes on the floor! More to come . . .

Links

CITES Secretariat
13th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP13)