adminPatrick Chitumba Senior Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority is sitting on 70 tonnes of ivory valued at over $17 million. As a result, the parliamentary portfolio committee for Environment, Water, Tourism and Hospitality Industry intends to ask treasury to release more funds so that the authority can lobby the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species, (Cites) to review restrictions on ivory trade.
The next Cites meeting will be hosted by South Africa in 2016.
In an interview on the sidelines of the sensitisation workshop for the parliamentary portfolio committee on Environment, Water, Tourism and Hospitality in Hwange, committee chairperson Annastacia Ndhlovu said they were going to lobby treasury so that it releases more funds for a larger Zimbabwe representation at the Cites meeting.
“It is the view of the committee that government must support the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate, Zimparks and other stakeholders that will participate at Cites that’s coming in 2016 and capacitate them to be able to lobby their counterparts in the region and those of sound mind so that there is a review of the ban on trade which is impacting negatively on the economy,” she said.
Ndhlovu said the moratorium on ivory trade was aimed at crippling the smaller nations.
“This is all about power dynamics, big countries oppressing the small nations because the countries that so much seem to care more about the elephants don’t even have them. So it is all hypocritical and I see that these are just very big imperialistic tendencies which must be stopped,” she said.
An endangered species that has been decimated in some countries due to poaching, elephants and rhinos are protected from international trade by Cites.
However, with the ever increasing elephant population in the country, Zimparks is intending to lobby Cites members to do away with the ban in ivory trade so that it can clear its stocks.
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