Posted on November, 08 2002

CITES Conference (CoP12) in Santiago, Chile: Summary report of the first week (3-8 November 2002) The first week of CITES concentrated largely on procedural and financial issues. In his welcoming speech, CITES Secretary General Willem Wijnstekers told delegates that the Convention has now developed into the most effective international legal instrument for nature conservation. He also stressed that increased efforts, resources and capacity were needed to implement CITES decisions, particularly in developing countries and highlighted the need for CITES to move into the area of commercial fish and timber species. Immediately prior to CoP 12, 24 African elephant range countries met and issued a communiqué. They all signed up to this with the exception of Kenya, who expressed reservations. The countries proposed to defer any ivory trade for at least 18 months (May 2004), to allow the international monitoring system on illegal elephant killing (MIKE) to establish further data. WWF is evaluating the proposals in the communiqué and will be commenting when the elephant proposals are discussed early next week. Most of the range states continue to support the proposal to list mahogany on Appendix II. However, the members of industry that are against it, along with the two range states (Bolivia and Brazil) that are opposed to the proposal are lobbying other range states very heavily so that they withdraw their support. Therefore, WWF and TRAFFIC continue to work with the supportive range states, and others, to consolidate their support of the proposal. WWF launched its new Asian Leopard brochure at CITES. It can be downloaded from www.panda.org