A bid to legalize some sales of African ivory has failed. Delegates in South Africa rejected the proposal. Our environment correspondent is at the meeting in Johannesburg and I asked him who have put forward the idea and why.
Yeah, it is a rather complicated story. It dates back to 2007 and a comprise between African countries that on the one hand wanted to sell their stocks of ivory and other African countries who wanted extra protection for elephants. And basically, one part of the compromise was that there’ve been no sales allowed for nine years until 2017, but in the meantime, they set up what was called a decision making mechanism. And that would essentially investigate how to go about selling it on the international market. Essentially nothing happened for a number of years. Yesterday, South Africa raised the idea again and the conference voted by about 80% till rejected, so that particular attempt to resell ivory has stopped and is ended.
Well, you can imagine that the African Elephant Coalition, that’s a coalition of about 29 countries, they are looking for extra protection for elephants. They were pretty delighted about this. So I asked Dr. Patrick from Kenya for his reaction.
We were very concerned about this process because it is sending wrong signals to the organized criminals. And we have been opposed to it. And we are happy the conferential parties help ended this process, very very significant step to us, saving the African elephants.
Dr. Patrick. So saving the African elephants, is that, is that the end of the line for those who want to sell ivory legitimately?
帕特里克博士。拯救非洲象,那是不是希望合法销售象牙的人就束手无策了?
No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so by a long way. I think this was, you know, a process that has come to the end of the road. It’s nothing like that at all that the countries that are keen on this, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, they still have a number ofshots in their locker, if you like at this particular conference when they were trying to get extra permission to sell that ivory, so it’s not over by a long way. It’s removed something that was there for a long time, but it’s certainly not the end of the argument over the sales of ivory.
The British secret service agency MI5 has released files which throw new light on the activities of one of its most effective double agents in the Second World War. The Spaniard Joan Pujol had the unique distinction of being awarded an iron cross by the Germans and an MBE by his real masters, the British. His report has said to have been eagerly read by Hitler.