Special Issue - 20 November 2004
IUCN World Conservation Congress International Trade – Friend or Foe of Biodiversity? Certification for Sustainability Cutting our losses – reducing illegal trade in natural resources What Future For Asia’s Wildlife Trade Social Justice and Equity in Conservation Trade @ the Members’ Business Assembly
Certification for Sustainability
Certification and labelling schemes, it was argued in the workshop on "Certification for Sustainability", organised by IUCN’s Environmental Law Center on 19 November, are a difficult issue – as they try to merge two potentially conflicting fields of concerns, business practices and the environment, into one equation. In the attempt to include market externalities in their product evaluation, certificates give consumers the choice of paying more for the guarantee of certain product and production standards. Thus, certificates or labels can be seen to function as a common language, guaranteeing product quality independent of a company’s brand name. However, while good in intent, some critics point to potential adverse impacts on trade as a result of increased production costs, which particularly affect small and medium sized enterprises, and the possibility of misuse as non-tariff barriers to trade. Furthermore, some quality factors are very difficult to standardise, such as impact on biodiversity, and therefore not appropriate for certificate schemes.
For certification to work, mutual understanding is needed between business on the one side, which must understand and help achieve sustainability objectives, and NGOs on the other, which need to become aware of and accept the need to provide tangible benefits to business. New initiatives are already developing the certification-for-sustainability concept by applying it on-the-ground with work in green markets, greening operations of other markets and certification processes that target actors other than the final consumers. However, the sheer number of standards can pose a problem, raising the need for a better understanding of when standards are an effective tool and when other mechanisms should be used.
Cutting our losses – reducing illegal trade in natural resources
While the illegal trade in natural resources is decimating biodiversity, ruining peoples’ livelihoods and contributing to conflict there are still many ways to tackle the problem, participants concluded at the Cutting our losses – reducing illegal trade in natural resources organised by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and TRAFFIC on 19 November. The illegal trade in natural resources is a global problem of huge scale; driving conflict, promoting corruption and rewarding criminals while destroying biodiversity and undermining livelihoods. It is an issue that intersects environment and development. The facts are stark. 8,500 water snakes are taken from Cambodia’s Tonle Sap lake each day, three out of eight tiger species are already extinct and it is estimated that approximately half of all tropical timber imported into the EU has been logged illegally. Illegal trade is a problem of production methods and consumption patterns. Cutting our losses from illegal trade requires that solutions be found in both the developing and the developed worlds, requiring political will and concerted effort, participants noted. The session explored approaches available to the international community, governments, aid donors, private sector and the civil society. Regional trade arrangements must co-operate to tackle transboundary issues. Governments need to control their borders and strengthen national legislation. Aid donors must support interventions throughout the trade chain from producer to consumer and could link aid to better controls over illegal trade. The private sector has greatest opportunities to reduce illegal trade. However, in general, the commitment of companies to certification and supply chain management is dismal. The Tropical Forest Trust is tackling this by helping timber companies reach certification standards. Civil society faces perhaps the greatest challenge. It has to ensure the others meet their commitments as well as generating new ideas for combating illegal trade.
What Future For Asia’s Wildlife Trade
Biodiversity loss, and wildlife trade’s impact on that loss, is not rating high enough on government and donor political agendas to be allocated sufficient priority funds and resource – despite the magnitude of Asia’s consumer footprint and the link to economic development agendas, participants noted at the sponsored workshop "What Future for Asia’s Wildlife Trade" organised by TRAFFIC on 18 November. Although it would appear completely logical for more institutions to work together to achieve higher impact on illegal, unregulated and unsustainable wildlife trade, this would require some strict definition of institutional ‘niches’ and the assemblage of a composite team(s) of expertise to address large scale wildlife trade challenges in Asia. To ‘make the case’ for the right kind of donor support, and catalyse the right kind of partnerships between government agencies, NGOs and civil society, the imperatives of dealing with Asia’s Wildlife Trade need to be articulated in a clear and unambiguous format. A strategy for addressing Asia’s Wildlife Trade should be developed as a matter of urgency to convene the key players needed to deal with several priority components of the trade chain (source – market – end consumer). The need for better legislation, and better law enforcement, should be combined with appropriate incentives for community participation in managing resources from which they receive tangible benefits. To deal with the persistent demand for animal- and plant-derived products, more emphasis should be placed on understanding "why consumer’s consume" to guide innovative interventions (including campaigns) to change consumption patterns. Increased scientific assessments and information flows are also needed to measure trade demand against wild population status.
Social Justice and Equity in Conservation
IUCN and the development organisation CARE International initiated a discussion on ways towards making conservation work for poverty alleviation with a sponsored workshop on "Social Justice and Equity in Conservation" on 18 November. Noting that equity was not a defined concept, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, IUCN, proposed to use a wide approach, including cultural, economic, social and political aspects. Phil Franks, CARE International, however, questioned the achievability of the fulfillment of universal human/environmental rights through access and benefit-sharing (ABS). Using examples from Uganda, he showed how protected areas face serious difficulties to contribute to sustainable livelihoods and poverty alleviation and how they can lead to local welfare loss and huge international gains. Calling for a rebalancing of this trend, he claimed that there was a right to fair reward for stewardship and accordingly an obligation for international agencies to make this happen.
While the Convention on Biological Diversity’s provisions only call for "fair and equitable benefit-sharing" related to genetic resources, a study by the German Development Agency GTZ showed that current ABS arrangements have positive effects on poverty alleviation, though the (long-term) financial gains so far remained limited. However, processes requiring prior informed consent were crucial in facilitating empowerment of local and traditional communities, the study concludes. The study examined which level of clear guidance negotiators of ABS agreements need to achieve those benefits.
According to Kirsten Neumann from the United Nations University, the negotiations on an international regime on benefit sharing related to genetic resources – as mandated by the WSSD – present an opportunity to clarify the scope of the concept ‘equitable sharing’ and to promote a more holistic view on the conservation of biological diversity while producing capacity for national and regional implementation However, all participants agreed, ABS is no universal remedy: It can and has to be supported by other actions towards poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation.