Anti-Corruption Strategy: Illegal Wildlife Trade

Debate between Rupa Huq and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dr Huq]

I would have liked to see a tsarina, but we have a tsar and he is in his place.

In this debate, we are considering both the illegal wildlife trade and anti-corruption. The two are not as decoupled as one might think; the phenomena overlap more than one might imagine. We all remember the heart breaking case of Cecil the lion. He was lured out of a protected reserve to be killed and dismembered as a trophy—that is vile and revolting—as was his son. That highlights how trading in wildlife occurs worldwide. That is the case in fact, and in fiction recently. We have had the Panama papers, the Paradise papers, and “McMafia” on television on Sunday nights. That has reminded us of anti-corruption, corrupt practices—all those sorts of thing. This debate brings the two together; there is a nexus between anti-corruption strategy and the illegal wildlife trade. Drugs, human trafficking and the illegal arms trade might be the more obvious associations with the word “corruption”, and they hit the headlines more, but the illegal wildlife trade is ranked fourth globally, in terms of transnational crime networks, after those three things. It is worth more than £17 billion a year. That is the Government’s estimate. We do not know, because the trade is illegal, but it could be worth more.

This debate therefore goes further than conservation matters. One often thinks that animal issues are for the big-hearted people who are concerned about furry and cute species. That is important, but issues of sustainability, endangered species, the damage to our ecosystems and biodiversity are all implicated in animal issues. Another issue is trafficked animals. As I said, the debate goes further. For a start, the trafficked animals that we are talking about include lizards such as chameleons, rhinos for their horns, elephants for their tusks, and pangolins, which were celebrated recently on World Pangolin Day—the Foreign Secretary feted that day of the year. Pangolins are hunted for their scales. None of those animals are furry at all; they are desired for their high-value body parts. All this stuff raises questions of transnational crime and corruption.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on initiating this crucial debate. Given what she has said about the scale of the illegal wildlife trade and its connection to corruption, will she join me in supporting the Environmental Investigation Agency’s campaign for the UN convention against corruption to be amended to include the illegal wildlife trade? It currently does not, and no cases have been pursued by that agency. That ought to change.

[Dr Huq]

The hon. Gentleman, who is well known for his love of animals and has fought for many years on these issues and other environmental matters, makes a very valid point. I do not know in detail the document to which he refers, but it sounds as if a horrible loophole needs to be closed immediately, so I am grateful to him for drawing that to my attention.

I want to address the Government’s slightly lacklustre, “could do better” efforts to date at combating the illegal wildlife trade’s contribution to money laundering and organised crime. I have tabled written questions, as many hon. Members have—a lot of them are here today—and quite often the answer given is that the Government will be hosting a summit in London in October to address these matters, or they state sums of money that have been spent on this issue. To the layperson, a sum of money is a bit intangible. It is a figure; they cannot see what is actually happening. The October summit seems to be the answer to all our ills, but I have a series of questions for the end of my speech about specific things that I would like to happen.

As my co-chair of the APPG will know, the elephant in the room—ha-ha—on all this and on the anti-corruption strategy, which thankfully has now been published, is the slowness of the UK not just to encourage but to ensure that all our overseas territories adopt public registers of beneficial interest as soon as possible. I know that that issue is not quite within the Minister’s remit, but if she could pass it on to her colleagues, that would be great.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huq]

Right, let us stick to the point. To stamp out poaching would cut off the source, which we need to do so that animal carcases are not exported at all, let alone the body parts. We have spoken about the products at the other end. I think there are some studies that show that only 3% to 5% of income from commercial hunting goes to local communities. The rest goes into central Government, agencies, international corporations, terrorists and all sorts of other destinations.

The consultation on the ivory ban last autumn was very welcome, but it has all gone a bit quiet since it closed last year. We are already in March, so when will the results surface? The ban needs to be more than just virtue signalling. There need to be proper measures for combating the ivory trade at source.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I just want to make one point and follow it up with a question. Since the summit initiated by David Cameron, there has been huge progress. Only a few weeks ago, China closed down every one of its ivory carving factories, which will have a huge impact in reducing demand in China. There have been all kinds of ripple effects across the world as a consequence of that early summit. Demand is being tackled at a very high level. As a country, we can take a lot of credit for that. Everyone expects that the consultation will result in a pretty clear position by this Government—the position that most people want the Government to take. The one concern I have is that it will not go far enough in terms of species. It is not just about elephant ivory. If the elephant ivory market is closed down, there will be a move—we are already seeing signs of this—towards other ivory bearing species, such as the walrus, the narwhal, what other species?

[Zac Goldsmith]

Rhinos do not produce ivory. There are other ivory-bearing species. Therefore my hope—I hope the Minister will acknowledge this later—is that the ban will be on not just elephant ivory, but all ivory.

[Dr Huq]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. China has introduced a total ban. That is what we would like from our Government. It is not often that we are following China. Usually we are leadership and not followership. He is absolutely right that this concerns other species as well. I think the famous chess set that people talk about came from walrus tusks, so it is not only elephants. I feel there has been a slowing in some of those laudable aims, perhaps because the bandwidth of the Government is being reduced by other issues—nobody foresaw Brexit at the time of that first anti-corruption summit. We can go further and faster.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thought of the third species: the hippo. There are only 100,000 hippos in the world, which is extraordinary. If there is any increase in demand for hippo ivory as a replacement for elephant ivory, they are finished. I wanted to put the lovely, noble hippo on the record as well.

[Dr Huq]

Is the song about hippos “Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud”, or am I misremembering that from my long-ago youth? Yes, the hippos are a valiant species.

We are one of the largest countries to export ivory to south-east Asia. As the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) said, this can create desire and demand for people to own these products as things with a luxury status. We need to work with China and other south-east Asian Governments to ensure that demand is dampened and even destroyed, and that ivory’s cultural cachet—that it is a cool thing to have—falls.

In this post-referendum situation, as we head towards Brexit, there is a potential opportunity to promote other British luxury goods as alternatives to ivory in this brave new world we are heading to, which not all of us wanted to go to. I want to put on record the work done by my constituent Duncan McNair of Save the Asian Elephants—he deserves praise. Perhaps the Minister would like to meet him because he has some good ideas. Although in 1975 the Asian elephant in theory became a protected species, abuses continue to this day—he can talk ad infinitum about those.

The black rhinoceros—yes, the rhino was there—is in danger of being hunted to extinction in the wild, as an hon. Member mentioned. The organised poaching gangs associated with it promote corruption and organised crime. The rhino horn shipped to Asia from Africa is often sold for more than gold and platinum on the black market. The UN figures put the annual trade in Asia at £8 million. Lion numbers declined by 43% between 1993 and 2014. As of July 2017, the continental population of African lions was estimated to be 20,000. All these wonderful species are disappearing from our planet. Across their range, lions are in decline. They face threats from loss of habitat and prey, as well as illegal poaching and hunting. Lion bones, as well as those of leopards and other big cats, are used in some east Asian medicine—there is a myth that they have medicinal properties.

There have been success stories in the fight against the organised illegal wildlife trade. Lion hunting trophies are no longer permitted in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Somalia. It is not all doom and gloom. The Kenya Wildlife Service has been praised by the UN and the coalition Government because it introduced a £10 million grant to combat the trade in ivory and rhino horn. This debate was not meant to be about simply knocking the Government, but I do want to outline some areas where we could do better.

Some other good news is that, in 2017, a Chinese trader in Nanjing was arrested for what he believed to be tiger bone, but was in fact a lion bone. That illustrates how criminal gangs can use lion bones to skirt restrictions on tiger bones—there is slippage. There is a sense that the commercial farming of lions and tigers in South Africa could be fuelling rather than satiating demand for big cat bones in traditional medicines.

Clearly, aspects of the illegal wildlife trade exist in tandem with elements of legalised trade in wildlife parks. Again, the case of Cecil the lion was in a wildlife park. The Environmental Investigation Agency found that legal loopholes allowing the hunting of rhinos for live export and for trophies were being used to facilitate poaching. There is an argument in some circles for the promotion of farming certain animals to combat the illegal trade in their body parts, but some evidence shows that far from combatting the trade, it fuels demand. Again, there is that question of supply and demand.

On page 62 of the strategy, there is an eye-catching box with a border, which features discussion of the UK’s efforts to tackle the international wildlife trade. It includes references to the international meeting in October, which we are all looking forward to, sharing expertise with Vietnamese customs authorities, co-operation between Chinese and African forces and supporting follow-ups in Botswana. The message is that progress is being made, but it does not offer any concrete examples of policies or initiatives.