Elephants, The Ivory Trade and CITES

In the past twenty years, elephants, particularly trade in elephant products, including live elephants, elephant skins, and ivory, have loomed large on the CITES agenda.

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When CITES first became operational, the Asian elephant was place on the "no commercial trade" Appendix I. The African elephant started its CITES existence in the "managed commercial trade" Appendix II. Current elephant controversies deal with trade in African elephant products, particularly ivory, and can be traced back to a COP 7 (October 1989) decision to uplist the African elephant to Appendix I (no commercial trade).

The move to ban trade in ivory started slowly. Stating in the 1970s both the ease of and extent of elephant poaching across the African continent increased. As reports of declines in elephant populations emerged, member states of CITES agreed at the COP 5 meeting (May 1985) to investigate the incidents. Support for a halt to the ivory trade really picked up steam in the next few years, following the efforts of the Environmental Investigation Agency, whose research showed that the rapid decline in the African Elephant population was mainly attributed to the poaching of elephants for the purpose of the ivory trade.

"The illegal trade was responsible for the death of 100,000 or more African elephants each year. Between 1979 and 1987 Africa lost half of its elephant population."

At COP 7, in October 1989, the parties to CITES agreed to move the elephant to Appendix I and enact a world wide ban on the trade in ivory, which went into effect in January 1990.

Since the ban was enacted, elephant populations across the continent made a come back, although exact numbers are disputed. As a result of increasing elephant populations, some southern Africa states, principally Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia claimed that their elephant populations grew to an unmanageable extent and requested a 'downlisting' of the elephant from Appendix I to Appendix II status in order to resume the ivory trade. Their request was voted down at the COP 9 meeting, (November 1994), but following rigorous debate and a few rounds of voting, the petitioning states were conditionally granted their downlisting request at COP 10.

Two types of conditions attached to the downlisting merit attention. First Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia were granted a one shot opportunity to sell off their already accumulated ivory stocks, to the Japanese market, and the now Appendix II listing for African elephants in these states stipulates a zero quota for ivory trade. In February 1999, CITES Standing Committee gave the final go ahead and in April of 1999 the trade of raw ivory took place. The other condition placed on a return to any sort of normalcy in the ivory trade would be contingent on the development and implementation of a system for data gathering and monitoring of both the legal and illegal trade in elephant products.

During the interim between COP 10 and 11, three organizations, the IUCN, TRAFFIC, and CITES have been working on the new elephant administration system. It's based on two interrelated programs, The Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS) and Monitoring of Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE).

ETIS is a statistics and data base system intended to gather information about all aspects of trade in elephant products, including the number and place of seizures of illegally traded elephant products as well as the course of legally traded products. Implementation is far from complete. Data collection, especially from member states has been slow, unreliable at times, and inconsistent. The hope is for continued improvements as the relevant CITES bodies publicize the system to all relevant member states.

MIKE is a land based information gathering system with a statistical process used to choose 45 locations in Africa and 15 in Asia to personally gather data on elephant populations, especially information on illegal killings and enforcement efforts. Implementation is slow with only a few pilot projects in central Africa currently underway.

COP 11 appears to be headed towards another elephant and ivory trade show down as Botswana, Nambia, and Zimbabwe have proposed maintaining the Appendix II listing for African elephants including the inclusion of a yearly set quota for ivory trade (Prop 11.21, 11.22, 11.23). South Africa (Prop. 11.20) proposes a downlisting of its elephants to Appendix II, also including a set quota for ivory trade.

Opposing these petitions is a joint Kenya/Indian petition (Prop 11.24) for moving the entire African elephant population back to Index I, the "no commercial trade" index.

© 2001. Patricia A. Michaels