Past, present and future of the Working Group on E-Commerce of Specimens of CITES-Listed Species
Perhaps because I have demonstrated far too much of an unhealthy
interest in the challenge of tackling CITES cybercrime, because
I appear a bit of a nerd, or perhaps because I was just too
vocal during the CITES E-Commerce working group last year,
I was pleased to be elected to chair the CITES E-Commerce
working group envisaged at the 14th meeting of the Conference
of the Parties (CoP14, The Hague, 2007) and necessitated
by the Vancouver workshop. This article reflects on the need
for the Vancouver workshop, its deliberations and outcomes,
and, most challenging of all, what we still have to do to
make a difference.
Past
In the face of the threat of the sale of CITES products disappearing
not underground but into the unclear and difficult-to-see alternative
dimension of cyberspace, by becoming increasingly offered for
sale and traded over the Internet, Parties at CoP14 stepped
up and grasped the challenge by sectors responsible for this
development. Those sectors include various and nefarious forms
of illegal activities where the criminals have increasingly
turned to using the Internet to advertise their goods and groom
potential purchasers. We are all aware of the difficulties
that law enforcement organisations have faced in trying to
identify, track and catch criminals that use this medium to
advertise their wares and to keep in touch with their networks.
It was, therefore, a necessary and a brave move for the CITES
community to take. By doing so, the CITES community is acknowledging
that it needs to focus its attention on this medium much more
than it has done previously in the face of a very steep and
difficult path that needs to be traversed to first understand
and then tackle the issue.
I was thus pleased to attend what was in effect the second
step on that path, the CITES E-Commerce Workshop held in Vancouver
in February 2009. Not only was the hospitality of our hosts,
this month’s guardians of the Olympic tradition, was outstanding,
but the hard work they had put into ensuring that the right people
were present and the facilities for their open dialogue were
available, meant that the discussions were stimulating, informative,
challenging and, above all, focussed.
Readers will have seen the report of the outcomes of that workshop
in document SC58 Doc. 22 ,
presented at the 58th meeting of the Standing Committee (SC58,
Geneva, July 2009) for endorsement. Workshop participants
agreed at the outset that it was only realistic initially to
try to tackle Internet services, and the sites where potentially
illegal CITES products were being offered for sale and purchased.
When speaking about cybercrime, there are also forums and email
mechanisms which may well be being equally used and abused. However,
we have to be pragmatic and take steps to address one medium
at a time and to do so publicly in a way that raises awareness
of the threat of illegal sales, and specifically the potential
for purchasers unwittingly becoming involved in such illegal
and damaging practices.
It was thought very beneficial that participants with different
viewpoints and experiences were present. In that way, the workshop
aired all the important issues that needed to be considered,
even if it was not able to achieve a consensus on the way forward
on all points and had to leave some issues unresolved for consideration
at some point in the future. Like the overall challenge, getting
consensus is a step by step process!
Those unresolved issues were discussed at
SC58 last year and it was clear that the Standing Committee
also recognized both the need to move forward in tackling the
issue, and to do so with challenging objectives and time-scales,
but also the need to be pragmatic and realistic about what
can be done immediately and what may need to be addressed in
a longer time-frame.
Present
The recommendations made at SC58 are presented
in document CoP15 Doc. 32 ,
and I hope that this stimulates a broad and deep discussion
and agreement on both the need and the path for CITES to follow.
It would of course be wrong of me to pre-judge those discussions,
and as the Chair of the working group, I will listen to the
views of the Parties and faithfully take those forward as efficiently
as possible. However, I do think that it is important for all
those with an interest in making this medium a safe and legal
one for CITES trade to take place to take a pragmatic, realistic
and achievable view of how best to move along the path ahead
of us. Equally, I believe that this was the view of the workshop
participants and the Standing Committee. It is much better
to chip away at a challenge and make real but slow differences,
than to try and tackle everything at once and fail to achieve
anything.
Future
It will come as no surprise that I believe that the recommendations
contained in document CoP15 Doc. 32 are considered positively
and adopted. As a participant in the Vancouver Workshop and as
a member of the Standing Committee, the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland fully supports the recommendations
being put forward. No doubt that at the upcoming CoP15 (Doha,
2010), Parties, including potentially the United Kingdom, will
want to amend and improve the draft decisions and the proposed
amendments to Resolution Conf. 11.3 (Rev. CoP14). What
is nevertheless clear to me is that there is still a long way
to go before we have a sufficiently strong toolkit of experience
and measures that Parties can draw upon to improve our confidence
that the sale of specimens of CITES-listed species on the Internet
can be fully relied upon to be legal, and that prosecutions
can successfully occur whenever this is not the case.
I trust that Parties and other participants at CoP15 will reflect
on the urgency of moving forward on many of the recommendations
proposed in relation to Resolution Conf. 11.3 (Rev. CoP14)
and send a strong signal to Parties to take whatever actions
are best suited to their circumstances. As ever, there will
be no one-size-fits-all solution and we should guard against
taking such an approach for fear that, by so doing, we will
fail to enable actions in those countries where the circumstances
vary from the norm, and in turn lose their experiences in tackling
Internet trade and ensure that it is legal.
Of particular importance when considering what is pragmatic,
realistic and achievable, is the need to acknowledge what CITES
can and cannot do. The Convention’s purpose is to ensure
that where trade occurs it does so sustainably. Its purpose is
not to curtail such trade where it is not necessary. We are all
aware of how sustainable trade can provide benefits to source
countries, local communities, consumer countries, the global
economy and indeed the species’ security itself, where
undertaken in compliance with CITES rules. The establishment
of a toolkit of measures can and should provide the opportunities
for countries to contribute to and use whatever suits their
circumstances best. The direction that we take to establish
the toolkit and the tools that we put into it should not make
it more difficult to conduct trade legally and sustainably,
as to do so would risk alienating some sectors and driving
both legal and illegal trade underground.
I believe that after the COP has concluded and the dust has
settled, the United Kingdom will look at the CoP15 outcomes
and consider how it should offer guidance on the use of the
Internet when advertising and purchasing species at risk. At
the same time as hoping that such guidance will be achieved
with the assistance and agreement of all stakeholders, I hope
that we will be given a good launch pad for considering and
trialling such guidance. I hope that our developing and using
such guidance will assist the E-Commerce Working Group, the
Secretariat and, eventually, the wider CITES community by providing
useful experience on which to build. I also hope that other
stakeholders will also share with us their experiences to ensure
that we have as broad a range of tools to use to make the maximum
progress in tackling the threat of illegal e-commerce as quickly
as possible.
Trevor Salmon
Chair, Working Group on E-Commerce of Specimens of CITES-Listed
Species
Head of CITES and International Species Policy team
Zone 1/07C, TempleQuay House
2 The Square, Bristol, BS1 6EB
Tel: +44 (0)117 372 8384
Fax: +44 (0)117 372 8373
Email: Trevor.Salmon@defra.gsi.gov.uk
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