International Wildlife Crime

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I congratulate right hon. and hon. Members on initiating this very important debate and on their excellent speeches. The appalling reality is that even if this House were full today, each of the 650 or so Members of Parliament could deliver a bespoke speech on wildlife crime without once repeating anyone else’s words. The natural world is under siege. Countless iconic species—we have heard endless examples today—are teetering on the edge of extinction.

The tragedy is that the worse the problem becomes, the harder it is to address, because the closer an endangered animal moves towards extinction, the greater its market value. People used to buy rhino horns mainly for medicine, and many still do, but increasingly people now buy them as an investment. During the second half of 2011, rhino horn auction lots surged by 67% on mainland China. In effect, people are betting their money on the extinction of species and hoping for such an extinction in order to boost their investments. I cannot imagine anything more revolting, but it happens.

I will focus on one aspect of this horror story which has already been covered in some detail—the illegal trade in ivory. Africa has lost an astonishing 90% of its elephants in the past half century. In the 1970s, Chad alone had 400,000 elephants; today, that is the entire population of elephants in the wild in all 38 range states in Africa. Chad’s elephant population is now in the low hundreds. We will remember that in March, 88 elephants were butchered in the space of one week—33 of them, we are told, pregnant females. We have heard the figures: 40,000 elephants killed a year, or one every 15 minutes. Members can do the rest of the maths for themselves. The situation is just as dire in Asia. According to the Elephant Family charity, there are only 1,200 breeding males left in India. It is an unspeakable catastrophe.

Elephants are among the most thoughtful, intelligent and fascinating creatures. If anyone doubts that, I recommend that they look up a story I became aware of only a few days ago about two crippled old circus elephants, Jenny and Shirley. It is worth looking it up on the internet; it has been written about all over the place. The elephants met 30 years ago in a circus. Jenny was a little baby, and the older elephant became something of a surrogate mother for her. Jenny was eventually sent off to a different circus, but 20 years later they were reunited—old and damaged from the activities in which they had engaged in the circus—in a lovely sanctuary in Tennessee. There are simply no words to describe the obvious intensity of the love they had for each other for their remaining 10 years. I am not even going to try to describe it, but I encourage anyone watching this debate please to look it up. Watch it yourself, Madam Deputy Speaker, and weep.

Then we should remember that these animals are being butchered for trinkets such as toothpicks and chopsticks—nothing more noble, special or important than that. We should remember, too, that between the wilds of Africa and the mantelpiece, where these things often end up, there is a vortex of violent organised crime, with much of the proceeds funding terrorism. The truth is that when a consumer buys a piece of ivory, they might as well be putting money in a collection tin for al-Qaeda, or buying guns for Joseph Kony’s slave children or for Sudan’s vicious Janjaweed. We have already heard about al-Shabaab, which was responsible for the atrocities in Nairobi—a massacre funded by blood ivory. If anyone is tempted to imagine that this is not an issue for us, let them at least make those links and recognise that the ivory trade makes our world a lot less safe.

Next week we can take a giant step towards resolving this issue, or at least beginning to resolve it. We know that it is possible. As we have heard, the world nearly put an end to the international ivory trade when it was banned in 1989. Poaching did not end, but it dropped off dramatically and the black market ivory prices slumped. Then, of course, we had the one-off sales and the black market roared back into action. It was stimulated by the existence of the legitimate market and was able to flourish under the disguise of the legal trade. According to the formidable Will Travers, who has already been cited three times today and is sitting up in the Gallery with his daughter, more elephant tusks were seized in 2011 than in any year since the ban.

As world leaders convene in London next week, we know what needs to be done: an international ban on all forms of ivory trade, and that cannot be achieved without China. The good news is that things are beginning to happen. The country’s largest online marketplace, Taobao—the equivalent of eBay—has banned a very wide range of wildlife products, including ivory. That suggests a change in the culture of Chinese consumers, with a bit of help from the magnificent International Fund for Animal Welfare, which has been campaigning there. The Chinese Government also destroyed 33 tonnes of ivory, but the state itself still owns 30 ivory carving factories. The simple fact remains that unless they turn their attention to the legal trade, the extinction of elephants will be assured. That has to be a prime focus at the summit.

My final point relates to the African elephant action plan, which has already been discussed at some length, so I will be brief. It is supported by all 38 African elephant range states, which I think is a first. I am pleased to see that the Minister for Government Policy will be responding to the debate, and I ask him to note that 126 Members have signed an early-day motion calling on the Government to use Department for International Development funds to ramp up support for the plan. It requires £200 million over 10 years— £20 million per year—and, in the context of our aid budget and that of other countries, that is a reasonable price to pay, given the benefits it would bring to people and, as we have heard, to nature. I am not suggesting that we go it alone, but we can take the lead, as we are already doing. The condition would be unanimous support for at least a 10-year moratorium.

The Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Foreign Secretary have shown extraordinary leadership in recent months and I am really grateful for that, as I am sure is everyone else present, but next week’s summit is only the beginning and we must follow it through to the end.

--- Later in debate ---

[Zac Goldsmith]

The hon. Gentleman has just mentioned illegal fishing in Africa. Does he acknowledge that, just as there are undeniable links between the ivory trade and terrorism, there are clear links between overfishing by illegal vessels in African coastal waters and the rise of piracy and terrorism? The rise of piracy in Somalia is linked almost exactly with the collapse of the country’s fish stocks, and the same now seems to be happening in Senegal, where 50,000 fishermen have warned their Government that if foreign vessels continue to deplete their oceans, they will adapt as the Somali fishermen have adapted, and become pirates. It is a security issue as well.

[Barry Gardiner]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I enjoyed his collection of all that information, and his presentation of it to the House. He is absolutely right: when we look at Somalian piracy, we see that the conflicts in the horn of Africa have been driven constantly by environmental degradation. If only a fraction of the money spent by our Navy, and the navies of the world, on policing vessels that pass through the straits there—the costs of increased insurance for ships, for instance—were invested in resolving the environmental problems, we should be in a much better position.