BY NOKUTHABA DLAMINI

Zimbabwe will this month hold a regional summit to discuss a common position on the global ban on ivory trade as the countries battle to fund conservation activities and rising poaching activities.

The summit to be held in Hwange  between May 23 and 26 will be attended by environment and tourism ministers from the Southern African Development Community (Sadc).

Ministers from Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Angola will attend the summit.

Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (Zimparks) spokesperson Tinashe Farawo said the region wanted to speak with one voice on the ivory trade ban by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which has been in place since 1998.

“We want to build consensus around African countries to speak with one voice when it comes to conservation and safeguarding of our animals and the communities,” Farawo told VicFallsLive.

“We also want to find out on what is it that we can do in terms of dealing with our stockpile because as Zimbabwe, we are sitting on more than half a billion dollars of ivory.

“Issues around the lifting of the CITES ban will be extensively discussed so that at least our people can benefit as we try to also fight wildlife related crimes around the southern Africa region.”

He said African countries have failed to lobby against the ivory trade ban because of lack of a platform where there can speak with one voice at CITES gatherings.

“If we build consensus as Africans, when we go on an international wildlife forum undivided and our voices can outweigh the decision,” Farawo said.

“We also want to take stock of our failures and successes over the years as neighbouring countries and to also come up with strategies and methods of how-to carry out conservation, to deal with climate change and poaching”

In 2019, Zimparks reported that more than 200 elephants and other wildlife species at the country’s game parks died due to drought.

The authority says its failure to dispose of its huge ivory stockpiles has left it unable to fund conservation activities and also to mitigate against the effects of climate change.

“Almost every animal is being affected by this ban,” Farawo said.

He said an increasing number of animals were straying from game reserves into nearby communities in search of food and water leading to cases of human-wildlife conflicts that resulted in the death of 71 people last year alone.

Stevenson Dhlamini, an economic analyst from the National University of Science and Technology, said the forthcoming summit could unlock opportunities for the country’s economy.

“Also, this move will go a long way in ensuring that the population growth of elephants is manageable,” Dhlamini said.

“The communities will also benefit from the influx of tourists into their communities, which results in economic empowerment.

“Again, the lifting of the ban will ensure that the blanket approach to environmental protection does not result in an unfair effect on the communities who do not have the capacity to sustain larger elephant populations which then strains the ecosystem.”

Zimbabwe has an estimated elephant population of 85 000, which is the second largest in Africa after second only to neighbouring Botswana with more than 130 000.

The southern African country has been exporting live elephants to countries such as China and authorities say this is one of the ways of controlling their population and also to raise money for conservation.

Between 2016 and this year Zimbabwe exported about 100 elephants, mainly to China and the United Arab Emirates and raised more than US$3 million.

There have also been suggestions that the country must start culling elephants.

The country last culled elephants in 1988 and continues to have stockpiles of ivory which it cannot sell because of restrictions.