Right move

The tremendous effort made by South Asian Experts Group this week toward formation of a South Asia Wildlife Enforcement Network is (SAWEN) praiseworthy. Such a network will not only strengthen the attempts to crack down the regional mafia on illegal trade in flora and fauna, it will more urgently help the law enforcement agencies to become better organized and coordinated than the criminals themselves. SAWEN will be a regional inter-governmental law-enforcement network designed to combat illegal wildlife trade. It will give a proactive response to South Asia´s alarming levels of wildlife trafficking and loss and it will be a mechanism by which countries can share information and learn from each other´s best practices and experiences. Over the next six months, it will focus on coordinating key information and identifying further resources and expertise from member countries to develop joint operations, training programs, communication plans and fund-raising to enable the network to begin interdicting major trafficking activities.



The three-day meeting of the experts that ended Wednesday must also be lauded for the extraordinary success in getting India to finally agree to the formation of SAWEN. The southern neighbor for a year sat on the proposal claiming that curbing illegal trade is a sovereign issue. But the Indian establishment this time around came to accept the harsh reality facing this region that illegal trade in endangered species has crossed all political boundaries and is a major threat to the region as a whole. India must now also show leadership in addressing this alarming threat and sign the memorandum of understanding on wildlife trade with Nepal as proposed by the Nepal government sometime back. It will be in the interest of the two countries to work together in this regard as India and Nepal together contain 10 percent of the global bio-diversity area. And also due to the porous border between the two states, such an understanding is a must.



The meeting proved highly successful for Nepal in particular as it has been lobbying for over a year for the establishment of the network. Nepal thus has a greater role to play now as the onus of interim coordination of SAWEN has fallen upon its shoulders. It was also agreed during the meeting to have SAWEN headquarters in Kathmandu. As urgent as it is to fight illegal poaching and trafficking in South Asia, it is well known that corruption is rampant in this part of the world. At home, the government is yet to establish the much talked about wildlife crime control bureau. A mechanism must be designed to check the inflow of funds that will now pour from all direction. The World Bank has already promised $250,000 to the network. Also, the network must give priority to pressurizing member states to implement CITES law in their respective legislation so as to cover wider range of species while dealing with illegal trade and assign greater roles for customs and security agencies.

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