Domestic Ivory Market

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in this important debate, Mrs Main. I thank the members of the public who signed the petition and the Petitions Committee for securing this debate. Our thanks must also go to all the organisations, some of which have been mentioned, that are supporting this cause and working to protect elephants and other wildlife in this country and across the world. The hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall), on behalf of the Petitions Committee, made a very clear case for why the Government need to support the ban set out in the petition. I thank him for that. I commend those who have taken part in the debate, especially my hon. Friends the Members for Bassetlaw (John Mann), for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) and for York Central (Rachael Maskell). They all made an excellent case for ensuring the survival of elephants and, most importantly, why the weight of responsibility is on us here and now.

Throughout the debate, we have heard from hon. Members how the UK, and indeed the EU, must match the action to stop the terrible ivory trade that the US, France, Hong Kong and recently China, the largest global market of all, have taken. The evidence of support for immediate similar action in the UK is clear from the number of people supporting this petition and from opinion polls showing that 85% of the British public want an ivory trade ban.

The main motivation for the UK Government should be the slaughter of elephants by poachers who feed these markets. The Government must recognise that an overwhelming majority of African countries actively campaign to close down ivory markets everywhere. The Government should listen to the African nations who share their lands with the elephant herds and not to the voices of the antique traders, the big game hunters or those who still sit on stored ivory as bullion.

The Government would do well to take notice of Botswana, the largest elephant range state. It is home to 130,000 elephants, almost a third of the total African elephant population. Botswana is a Commonwealth country, a parliamentary democracy and a long-standing friend of our country. Last year, it changed its policy and is now committed to 100% protection of its elephants, which have proved to be a sure asset for the tourist trade there. Botswana’s Environment Minister, Tshekedi Khama, spoke passionately at last year’s CITES conference in favour of appendix 1 status for elephants within his country’s borders, but he was ignored by the EU and the UK Government, who used their block vote to veto it. I have been told that many UK attendees at that conference felt a true sense of shame at this outcome.

Mr Khama and his brother, the President, remain absolutely committed to conservation and to Botswana’s role as a safe haven for migrating elephants under threat in neighbouring countries. Sadly, our Government have shown little commitment to supporting these efforts. Consultation documents, which are overdue and address only a fraction of the ivory trading problem, are certainly not seen as the way forward by Botswana.

Tanzania has also changed its policy on the ivory trade, freezing its stockpile, and trying to address the serious poaching threat that has decimated its elephants in recent years. Last month, the former President, Benjamin Mkapa, called on all nations to ban trade in elephant ivory. He said:

“We need to work together to stop this, our fellows must ban the importation and uses of elephant tusks, this means there will be no market for tusks and nobody will kill elephants.”

His words are clear, and our response as a friendly country should be to close our own ivory markets, not fiddle at the margins with one category of post-1947 modern ivory.

In East Africa, we already have the inspiring example set by Kenya. For many years, that country has led African calls to ban the ivory trade, anticipating the appalling escalation of poaching. Last year, its President publicly destroyed his country’s ivory stockpile of more than 100 tonnes with huge pyres in the Nairobi national park. The action was endorsed by both France and the US, but not by the UK. That is another broken promise by the Government, who advocated the destruction of ivory stockpiles in their 2010 manifesto.

Kenya went on to press successfully for additional international action to protect elephants at the International Union for Conservation of Nature and CITES conferences in September and October 2016. Although CITES appendix 1 status was blocked by the UK and other EU countries, those conferences passed resolutions calling for the closure of domestic ivory markets throughout the world. The resolutions are clear. They do not exempt antiques, but make a link between the existence of markets and the illegal killing of and trade in elephants. Again, the UK’s role is weak and ambiguous. We must remember that the EU is the single biggest exporter of ivory and ivory products according to the CITES trade database. There was a dramatic increase in the number of both raw and worked ivory items exported from the EU in the last two years for which data are available.

At the IUCN conference, many EU countries, including France, Italy and Spain, voted to support the unequivocal call to close domestic markets. Some others abstained but, shamefully, the record shows that the UK abstained by proxy. We sent a postal vote to abstain on the fate of elephants being poached at the rate of four every hour. The sound of the UK dragging its feet in this debate may resonate around the world, as well as in this Chamber.

Only last week, Patrick Omondi, the Kenyan CITES chief and chairman of the African Elephant Coalition of 29 African countries said:

“The CITES recommendation to close domestic ivory markets was a breakthrough. But it will be meaningless if countries ignore it. The EU and its Member States have an opportunity to realign themselves with France, which recently issued strict regulations, and work with China to implement the CITES recommendation. One thing is certain: business as usual is not an option if we want to save elephants for future generations.”

I call on the Minister again, as I did in the debate in December 2016, to step up to the plate and to keep her party’s promise to ban ivory trading altogether in the UK. As my hon. Friend the Member for York Central said in that debate, Labour would support the legal steps needed to implement the ban. We must act before it is too late for the elephants. I urge the Minister to act now, to forget exemptions, to support the petition and to heed the appeal of the 29 member countries of the AEC to both the UK and the whole of the EU to permanently ban all external and domestic ivory trade.

With the European Commission due to issue new guidance on the ivory trade within and exports from the EU, following its CITES management authority’s meeting tomorrow, will the Minister take the opportunity to press for new regulations in Brussels? How can we afford to see these intelligent, beautiful giants of the Earth disappear because our generation failed to save them from extinction?