Summary
The twenty-ninth meeting of the Animals Committee (AC29) of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) opened on Tuesday, 18 July in Geneva, Switzerland.
In the morning, CITES Secretary-General John Scanlon welcomed participants and underlined the AC’s “extraordinary and critical work” in bringing science to the decision-making and implementation processes of CITES. Hugh Robertson, AC representative for Oceania, on behalf of Fiji, presented Secretary-General John Scanlon with a tabua, a ceremonial sperm whale tooth with significant cultural value, in recognition of the repatriation to Fiji of 146 tabua confiscated at the New Zealand border.
The AC welcomed Mathias Lörtscher (Switzerland) as its new Chair. It addressed, among other issues: the Review of Significant Trade (RST); periodic review of the Appendices; captive-bred and ranched specimens; nomenclature; and species-specific matters. Chair Lörtscher established several working groups and a drafting group, which will meet on Wednesday and Thursday.
IISD Reporting Services, through its Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) Meeting Coverage, has provided daily web coverage and a summary and analysis report from the 29th Meeting of the CITES Animals Committee, Joint Meeting of the CITES Animals and Plants Committees, and 23rd Meeting of the CITES Plants Committee. The summary and analysis is now available in HTML and PDF.
Photos by IISD/ENB | Sean Wu
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Opening Plenary
John Scanlon, Secretary-General, CITES
Sofie Flensborg, CITES Secretariat
Tom De Meulenaer, CITES Secretariat
Simon Nemtzov, AC representative for Europe
Amir Hamidy, Indonesia
Chair Mathias Lörtscher, Switzerland
Delegates from Mexico
Delegate from Tanzania
Claire McLardy, UNEP-WCMC
Øystein Størkersen, Norway
Room view during the morning plenary
Ronald Orenstein, Humane Society International
Pablo Sinovas, UNEP-WCMC
Chair Mathias Lörtscher, Switzerland
NGOs raising their plates to join the membership of a working group
Kelly Malsch, UNEP-WCMC
Peter Paul van Dijk, CITES Nomenclature Specialist
David Morgan, CITES Secretariat
Guy Apollinaire Mensah, AC representative for Africa
Afternoon Plenary
View of the dais during the afternoon plenary
Tom De Meulenaer, CITES Secretariat, in discussions with Chair Mathias Lörtscher, Switzerland
Delegates taking notes
Delegate from European Union raising his plate
Vincent Fleming, AC representative for Europe
Hugh Robertson, AC representative for Oceania
Daniel Kachelriess, CITES Secretariat
Marcel Calvar Agrelo, AC representative for Central and South America and Caribbean
Amie Bräutigam, Wildlife Conservation Society
Firdaus Agung, Indonesia
Zhigang Jiang, China
Dan Natusch, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
Alain Jouffrey, GS1 Switzerland
Around the Venue
