Maurice.An Independent Review Of The Lusaka Agreement On Co-Operative Enforcement Operations Directed At Illegal Trade In Wild Fauna And Flora
The objective of the Lusaka Agreement is to reduce and ultimately eliminate illegal trade in wild fauna and flora among the Parties to the Agreement. After some 10 years of operation the Governing Council to the Agreement requested the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to carry out an independent review, specifically to critically analyse and assess the achievements and accomplishments of the Agreement and the problems and challenges facing its implementation.
The conclusions of the Review make for sorry reading, and clearly this is one Multilateral Environmental Agreement (MEA) in need of significant reform (proposals for which are set forth). But what is really interesting about this Review is neither its conclusions nor its recommendations; nor that by making some few changes to the Agreement it could in fact become quite effective; but that the UNEP simply could not countenance that one of its high profile MEAs in Africa, which it has supported for many years, is completely ineffective. Predictably, the UNEP ignored this Review and produced its own bland version of the Agreement which continues along its own sorry path. Download
... and coming soon a report on some forest surveys carried out by UNEP, on the changing numbers and distribution of wildlife in the Nairobi National Park (to which there have been some quite hysterical responses) and even, if you are unlucky, a copy of my M.Sc. Thesis on the costs of conservation to Kenya (which are large).
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