Progress and achievements of the II High-Level Conference of the Americas on Illegal Wildlife Trade (English and Spanish)
2022/10/26 17:54:00 本站
  • Linking financial and transport sectors against illegal wildlife trade

  • At this conference, the Buckingham Palace and Mansion House Declarations were signed by the financial and transport sectors to support the fight against the illegal wildlife trade

  • The progress made in implementing the Lima Declaration commitments of 2019 was reviewed by governments

  • WCS had outstanding participation through its panelists

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Colombia was the host country of the II High-Level Conference of the Americas on Illegal Wildlife Trade, held on April 5 and 6 in Cartagena de Indias. The Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development of Colombia and the Embassy of the United Kingdom in this country led this meeting that brought together governments, academia, experts, civil society organizations, funders, among other actors, to articulate efforts and strengthen the international cooperation for the prevention and control of illegal wildlife trafficking in the Americas.

"The illegal wildlife trade moves, annually, between 20,000 and 40,000 million euros globally, and a large part of this wildlife trafficking comes from our countries," said the Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development of Colombia, Carlos Eduardo Correa, at the opening of the conference.

Zac Goldsmith, Minister for the Environment of the United Kingdom, and Pierre Lapaque, Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), also spoke at the introductory session of the event.

Lapaque commented: “It is necessary to give a response to the illegal wildlife trade since it is transnational; the countries must take joint actions that impact those activities.”

The II High-Level Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade was attended by 75 panelists who addressed the problem from different points of view.

The Deputy Minister of the Environment of Panama, Diana Laguna Caicedo; the Head of the Legal and Trade Policy Officers Unit at the Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites), Juan Carlos Vázquez; and the Ambassador (e) of the United Kingdom in Colombia, Tim Hemmings, among other personalities attended the Conference. The expert in conservation and anthropology, Jane Goodall, and China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, Jinfeng Zhou, among other experts, participated virtually.

Key Moments and Breakthroughs

Among the information, figures and data, research results, initiatives, and proposals presented, during the two days, this meeting also provided a space to review the progress in public policy since the signed of the Lima Declaration in 2019 by 20 countries and in which 21 measures were agreed to fight against this illegal activity, including the agreement of declaring the jaguar (Panthera onca) as a symbolic species of the Americas.

Ministers from the continent met in a private-technical meeting to discuss the barriers to implementing policies to prevent and control illegal wildlife trafficking. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) was invited to this meeting and delivered a summary of the evaluation carried out by this institution on the progress made in the implementation of the Lima Declaration commitments.

Adrian Reuter, Senior Advisor on illegal wildlife trade for Latin America and the Caribbean at WCS, shared with the government representatives the scope of this exercise. He emphasized some aspects to be considered in the countries' discussions, such as the importance of integrating, beyond governments and key actors in countries of origin, to those in transit and destination to address the problem from its origins to its destination. In addition, he emphasized the need to strengthen actions aimed at behavior change of people who demand products of wild and illegal origin; harmonize the consideration of this crime as a serious crime in all the countries among the Americas; and promote the development and implementation of national strategies to combat wildlife trafficking that would serve as a guide to add, coordinate and make actions more efficiently.

This Conference was also the stage to engage strategic sectors. On the second day of this meeting, the Buckingham Palace and Mansion House Declarations were signed by more than 10 companies from the financial and the transport sectors in Colombia that pledged to join efforts to deal with the illegal wildlife trade supporting the actions of the authorities.

Banco de Bogota, Avianca, Latam, Ultra Air, Viva Air, Wingo, Copa Airlines, Aero República, Copetran, Flota de la Macarena, TDM Colombia, and Medellin Airport were the companies that signed and committed to the common purpose of preventing, controlling, and stopping the illegal wildlife trade.

The British Deputy Ambassador to Colombia, Tim Hemmings, commented: “Joining efforts with the private sector is crucial; creating alliances allows us to bring new voices to the conservation discussion to identify and implement solutions. By signing the Buckingham Palace and Mansion House Declarations, promoted by the Royal Foundation and United for Wildlife, the companies present at this ceremony are committed to be part of the solution.”

At the close of the meeting, it was announced that in 2023 Argentina would be the host country for the next High-Level Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade, where governments and actors from different sectors will meet to share progress on the subject and generate synergies for cross-border collaborative work.

Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) at the Second Conference

WCS had outstanding participation in this conference with a six-expert delegation, including the Senior Advisor on Illegal Wildlife Trade for Latin America and the Caribbean, Adrian Reuter; the Program Manager of Counter Wildlife Trafficking (CWT) Andes-Amazon & Orinoco region, Yovana Murillo; the CWT coordinator for Mesoamerica, Kurt Duchez; the CWT coordinator for Bolivia, Mariana Da Silva; the CWT coordinator for Colombia, Luz Dary Acevedo and the director of the WCS office in Colombia, Catalina Gutiérrez.

In addition, the person in charge of Community Liaison and Conservation Agreements of WCS Guatemala, América Rodríguez, and the director of the Conservation Program of the Great Madidi-Tambopata Landscape of WCS Bolivia, Rob Wallace, participated virtually.

Regarding the participation and contributions of WCS in this conference,  the director of Forests, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development of Colombia, Adriana Santa, said: “It has been vital and important; we need an external expert who constantly evaluates how each country is advancing in its commitments of the Declaration [of Lima],  and WCS has been an excellent institution for this. They have given us great support by generating information, studies and collaboration to identify bottlenecks and to be able to facilitate them…at the next stage, continuing the implementation of the Lima Declaration commitments, I consider it would be important that WCS continues focusing and guiding us towards the fulfillment of the Lima Declaration.”

Those experts were panelists in different sessions where they presented the progress of the institution and its allies on topics such as the outcomes of regional analyzes on illegal wildlife trade (on borders and online) in Andean-Amazonian countries; the results of the evaluation and progress in the implementation of the Lima Declaration in the panel on advances in public policy with ministerial representatives; the self-management of indigenous communities and Conservation Agreements in the Petén, Guatemala; the progress in the protection of the jaguar and the projects financed by the Challenge Fund, among other presentations.

In addition, WCS, jointly with USAID and UNODC, co-organized the side event “Sub-regional initiatives implemented by USAID and its partners WCS and UNODC”; and supported the side event "Promotion of wildlife trafficking as organized crime in Peru: lessons learned working with the Peruvian Congress, environmental prosecutors and civil society" organized by USAID, OCEANA-Peru and DAR.

Source:WCS

Original Chinese Article: 

https://newsroom.wcs.org/News-Releases/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/17458/Progress-and-achievements-of-the-II-High-Level-Conference-of-the-Americas-on-Illegal-Wildlife-Trade-English-and-Spanish.aspx

Editor:Daisy

Contact: v10@cbcgdf.org; +8617319454776

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