VARIOUS: Increased ivory sales in China could lead to demand for poached ivory, says analyst

Record ID: 181865

  • Title: VARIOUS: Increased ivory sales in China could lead to demand for poached ivory, says analyst
  • Date: 7th November 2009
  • Summary: NAIROBI, KENYA (RECENT) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF CONSERVATIONIST ESMOND MARTIN'S ARTICLE IN EAST AFRICAN CONSERVATION
  • Embargoed: 22nd November 2009 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Environment / Natural World
  • Reuters ID: LVA21FYD6JWXUPXP46BS4IDEAUIS
  • Story Text: Tucked into a grimy industrial building in Guangzhou, a small band of Chinese master carvers chip away at ivory tusks with bamboo chisels, fashioning them into ingenious multi-layered balls and intricate carvings.
    Their ancient craft, with a lineage stretching back thousands of years and which once decimated African and Asiatic elephant populations, is now in danger of dying out itself, an ironic victim of the global ban on the commercial ivory trade.
    Seventy-seven-year-old Li Dingning has watched Guangzhou's once booming ivory industry get whittled down due to a lack of ivory.
    But after having been starved of fresh African ivory for years and scraping by on rare and pricey, excavated mammoth tusks, Chinese carvers are excited by the prospects of an easing of the global ban, after a watershed, 62-tonne batch of elephant tusks was imported legally into China last year.
    Old carvers like Li are banking on more of China's affluent masses buying their wares which are seen as status symbols and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
    "Before the 1990s you couldn't buy ivory within China. We used to only export our carvings. But now it can be freely circulated so there are more people than ever who want to buy ivory carvings and products," he said. Li added that Guangdong used to have more than 1,000 carvers, but now only just over 100 of them.
    While most countries enforce a 1989 ban on ivory, in recent years China and Japan have been permitted to buy non-poached ivory from several African countries in a move aimed at raising money for wildlife conservation, and to smother demand for poached ivory with a steady flow of cheaper tusks.
    This massive and controversial batch of stockpiled ivory from Southern Africa, bought by Chinese traders in auctions sanctioned by CITES, the global wildlife trade watchdog, highlights the global ivory trade's shifting centre of gravity toward China.
    In a 2007 report, the U.N.-backed CITES said China faced a "major challenge" as it continues to be the "most important country globally as a destination for illicit ivory," exacerbated in part by China's spreading influence and ties in Africa.
    "The present purchase is legal and it contributes to the revival of the craftsmanship in the ivory carving and sculpting and so on. But there is the danger that this may stimulate demand for illegal ivory because given the fact that you have rampant corruption and lax law enforcement both in Africa and in China," said City University of Hong Kong Professor of Political Science, Joseph Cheng.
    The two-decade long ivory ban has helped stabilise overall elephant numbers, with only scattered local populations under any real serious threat from poachers in countries like Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
    But increasingly, hauls of illegally poached ivory have been destined for East Asia and the CITES secretariat in Geneva notes a trend of long-time expatriate Chinese residents in Africa getting heavily involved in the trade, while quite a number of lower-level ivory couriers recently arrested have been Chinese.
    Poor governance in Africa, not just demand from China, is also to blame with governments often turning a blind eye to ivory sales.
    "I think it also has to do with the fact that China normally states that it respects the sovereignty of developing countries, it does not interfere in the domestic affairs of other countries and therefore in contrast to western business practices it has no concern for corruption and so on," Cheng said.
    China has invested heavily in oil-and mineral-producing African countries in past years as its economic might has grown, and many Chinese companies are active on the continent.
    "The other thing that has been happening is that recently many Chinese have come over from China to work on the African continent and in 2001 there were 72,000 apparently, in all of Africa and in 2006 according to the statistics I could find, there well over 500,000 and they are particularly active in Central Africa and Sudan and some other places, Cameroon, in buying ivory," said Esmond Martin, a conservationist who has closely tracked Chinese involvement in the black market ivory trade.
    In teeming market towns such as in Omdurman, Sudan, Chinese barter and buy ivory openly.
    Conservation groups World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and TRAFFIC said China should pair its purchases with conservation awareness programmes to let Chinese nationals abroad know that it is illegal to buy and bring home ivory from Africa.
    Within China, officials who regulate the domestic ivory trade say there hasn't been a conspicuous increase in ivory consumption given tight laws and controls that restrict ivory sales and manufacturing to some 130 addresses nationwide.
    This year alone, an extra 37 stores were approved as new, official ivory retail outlets.
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