A Case Study of Ivory Trade Ban

Non-state actors are significant in both spheres, trade and environmental diplomacy. In case of trade, two types of non-state actors are of utter importance, namely trans-national corporations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The first ones today often conduct their own diplomacy in order to advance their economic goals and no longer rely on diplomatic services provided by governments. The latter, NGOs usually have a somewhat contrary role and their diplomacy aims to ban trade in areas that harm local livelihoods, fauna or environment in general. Often state diplomacy and states themselves can be seen as “obstacles to change, not proponents of change” (Princen and Finger, 1994: 31) aiming to maintain order and stability. Thus, even if trade often leads to increasing environmental and other severe threats, governments as “defenders of the status quo” are not the likely actors involved in reducing those threats. (Ibid.)

A further problem of the traditional diplomatic ways of handling matters is “the nature of the actors themselves”. Diplomacy has been conducted for a long time “by an elite corps of diplomats”, which today have been complemented by political leaders and other bureaucrats. (Ibid.) Their work still remains vital, but diplomacy has become much more complex and new issues have risen to the agenda and even trade negotiations, a part of traditional diplomacy have become complex with the increasing powers of the companies themselves and the growing participation of other non-state actors aiming to interrupt for reasons of their own. Today professional diplomatic actors “trained in international law, diplomatic protocol, the art of negotiations…interstate relations, and…maintaining the status quo” find it increasingly difficult to handle all the new issues alone. (Ibid.)

The case of ivory trade is an eminent example of a case where trade that is beneficiary to many also produce irreversible harm to others, which makes it hard to reach any agreements by state negotiations alone. Trade in ivory has a long history, but this has meant that where as 500 years ago there might have been up to 10 million elephants in Africa but in 1979 only about 1.3 million, with 625 000 left in 1989 according to estimates. (Ibid. 121) Obviously, ivory trade was not the only reason also droughts, hunting, loss of habitat to humans and natural deaths were partly responsible for the decline. However, the most significant immediate cause of death has been poaching encouraged by the increasing demand and price for ivory after the World Wars. In Hong Kong, Europe and Japan the price of raw ivory rose from approximately $3-10 a pound in the 1960s to $200 a pound in the 1980s. Around the same time the ability to mass produce ivory carvings improved leading to ever increasing elephant killing and according to some estimates 200-300 elephants were killed by poachers daily. (Ibid. 122)

The response began with Ghana listing African elephants on appendix III of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1976. Elephants were uplisted to appendix II in 1978 and in 1985 the parties to CITES established the first export quotas and trade control systems.(Ibid.125) CITES, the intergovernmental institution could do but little to handle the wider elephant problem, there was need for non-state actors to get involved. Until this NGOs had mainly documented the decline and lobbied for a ban, but had mainly been ignored by CITES and its member states. However, in the 1980s NGOs managed to get a voice hard to ignore. After impressive lobbying and negotiation the United States African Elephant Conservation Act of 1988 was passed, forms of public diplomacy were used to heighten the public concerns for the elephants.

In 1989 the appendix I was finally agreed on with an international ban. (Ibid.127) In achieving the ban it was necessary to influence consumer behaviour in order to stop the trade, this could not have been done by states and their organizations because after all "states pursue economic growth through the promotion of production, consumption, and trade” and thus, international NGOs have stepped in to fill the “diplomatic niche”. (Ibid.134) These NGOs have the knowledge and can operate over state boundaries and have had huge impact in pushing the one hundred plus CITES member countries towards the ban agreement, which might not have been possible through traditional diplomatic routes. (Ibid.135-6)

In relation to CITES itself, CITES secretariat seems to turn to international NGOs in numerous cases as they “hold a peculiar advantage” as they are not bound by state boundaries and can conduct diplomacy that does not need to be nice or fawn anyone and governments can only retain good diplomatic relations through compromises. (Ibid. 142)

In general the importance of NGOs in both environmental and trade negotiations is the “influence achieved by building expertise in areas diplomats tend to ignore and by revealing information economic interests tend to withhold”. (Ibid. 41) Thus, it is important to remember that “[b]ad policies do not remain in effect simply because an absence of good ideas but also because powerful forces block the adaptation of those ideas” and non-state actors often are the most powerful counterforce of these enhancing the possibility to adapt some new ideas. (Ibid. 37)

Sources:

Princen, T. and Finger, M. (1994) Environmental NGOs in World Politics: linking the local and the global. London: Routledge

Addressing Global Warming

With the rise of the economic globalisation of powerful states, many find the significant process of ecological globalisation pushed to the limits from environmentalists in contemporary time. Both economy and environment is important for every state and individual, thus it is difficult to negotiate sufficient results in regards to reduce environmental issues because of the negative economic effects it would have had as a consequence.
Leaders of states are well aware of the dimension of environmental issues, thus, they pretend to be blind.



Al Gore, former vice president in the Clinton Administration, is a supporter of environment awareness, author, multiple award winner, business man and a member of a nongovernmental organisation. He is present in talks and negotiation. Al Gore's former position in the White House enabled him to build a good network with powerful people; his concerns are being heard and considered in Climate Change talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, Kyoto Global Warming conference, in the Congress and many more other meetings.
In his lifetime, he was very active in chairing and negotiating agreements; he accomplished many things in regards to climate change. He, for instance, chaired the congressional delegations on Global Warming in the US whereby 40 nations agreed to cut Greenhouse gas emission, he was a member of many who drafted the limitation of Greenhouse and Carbon dioxide release in the Kyoto Global Warming Conference for 150 nations and many more other things.
He once said

“For a long time, the scientists have been telling us global warming increases the temperature of the top layer in the ocean, and that causes the average hurricane to become a lot stronger. So, the fact that the ocean temperatures did go up because of global warming, because of man-made global warming, starting around in the seventies and then we had a string of unusually strong hurricanes outside the boundaries of this multi-decadal cycle that is a real factor; there are scientists who point that out, and they're right, but we're exceeding those boundaries now.”

It is very important, for every individual and for every state, to participate and take action against the damage of the environment. I think Al Gore is doing a good job in using his power to reach out to people and make them aware,educate them with public talks, documentaries, books and many other ways.


http://algoresupportcenter.com/accomplishments4.html
http://www.algore.com/
http://www.polisci.colostate.edu/fac/mb/NGO%20Influence.pdf

NGOs: Filling the Void

Power has slowly seeping from the Nation state. Embroiled in multilateral treaties, particularly since the Second World War, with the initiation of the Bretton Woods Agreement, GATT, NAFTA, ASEAN, the European Union, WTO, WHO, etc. all of which has eroded the nation state’s sovereign ability to act unilaterally. In parallel with this trend, we see the rise of the Multinational Corporation. It is generally accepted that these corporations are beholden only to their shareholders and, ultimately, to profit margins. By their very essence of being Multinational, who now regulates and monitors them? Many have annual turnovers in the multi billion range, giving them more economic leverage and, through the lobbying system, more diplomatic influence than many nations.

“The result of that has been the emergence of a wide range of

human activities which owe little or nothing to geographical location, time

of day and, most important of all, to government permission or regulation.” (1)

Even those companies, ostensibly still beholden to a nation state, such as BAE Systems, Britain’s largest arms manufacturer, can exert enough influence over the government to have a recent criminal investigation into corruption and bribery halted in its tracks. No lies were told to the public, no one pretended the charges were false; the investigation was simply not allowed to continue because the government deemed it so. If governments no longer have authority over these companies, it can be left to NGOs to set the moral agenda.

Jody Williams, the co-ordinator of the International Campaign to Ban

Landmines, wins the 1997 Nobel prize for Peace. In a subsequent interview

she announces that not only had: “We won the Nobel prize [but] we changed

the way diplomacy is done”. (2)

Greenpeace has become very active in fighting against the unaccountable multinationals with recent campaigns “ranging from the effort to stop the forestry “clear-cutting” in Canada, the scaling of the BP offshore rig the Brent Spar in the North Sea, and the boycott of Shell because of the execution of the imprisoned Ken Saro-Wiwa and the “Ogani Nine” in Nigeria, caught Western governments in the

crossére.” (3)

While there is an unfortunate time lag, NGOs seem to be stepping into the void, taking the Multinationals to task and replacing the dated concept of government reproach with the force of public opinion, seizing their authority from a “vacuum of responsibility”. (4) Save the Children, Amnesty International and Medecin Sans Frontiers, are all expanding their offices and diplomatic efforts at the UN, The director for Greenpeace UK said,

“It’s a completely natural evolution. It’s not enough simply to say there’s something happening to the environment. You now have to say what needs to be done to solve the problem”. (5)

(1) Langhorne, R Diplomacy of Non-State Actors, Diplomacy and

Statecraft, vol. 16, (2005) pp 332

(2) Hocking,B. & Governments, NGOs & the Recalibration

Cooper, A. F. of Diplomacy, Global Society, vol. 14, no. 3

(2000) pp 365

(3) Ibib.

(4) Ibid. pp 368

(5) Bandler, J. Boston Globe, (7th June 1998) in: Hocking &

Cooper, Governments, NGOs & the

Recalibration of Diplomacy, , Global Society,

vol. 14, no. 3 (2000) pp 365

The New Diplomacy

When a person just hears the word ‘diplomat’, he thinks of representatives of countries looking all serious and intelligent, holding giant folders containing vital documents of their own countries and sitting at a round table and discussing the economical and political future of their own countries held at hushed places around the world behind closed doors. This was how old diplomacy worked. The new diplomacy has been more inclusive and open. Earlier, NGOs and the media haven’t had a lot of representation in the diplomatic processes. Nowadays, there is a lot more involvement of NGOs in diplomatic processes. Even if they don’t always get a say in the negotiation processes, they can at least help to stir the negotiations in the direction that would benefit the public, if not the state. Moreover, the involvement of the mass media has also helped diplomacy to me more open in nature and it has helped to include the people as well, thus making it more democratic. The Internet also plays a major role in diplomacy. Since the Internet reaches every nook and corner of the world, it is possible to get every person’s opinion regarding a particular issue.

However, recent developments might have taken this “new diplomacy” a step too far. WikiLeaks, an Internet platform responsible for the leaking of sensitive documents and reveling the unethical conduct of governments, began releasing 250,000 classified United States embassy cables from the 28^th of November 2010. “These documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight in to US government foreign activities.” (Wikileaks). This catapulted the US in to a worldwide diplomatic crisis.

The Guardian is one of the leading newspapers that have already released some information. One key secret that has been leaked is that Arab leaders are privately urging an air strike on Iran and that US officials have been instructed to spy on the UN leadership. This is the most sensational piece of leaked information that will definitely cause uproar internationally. The rest of the leaked cables disclose details of Washington’s grave fear over the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program due to the rising instability in the country, the inappropriate remarks by Prince Andrew about a UK law enforcement agency and a foreign country, suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government, with one cable that alleges that vice-president Zia Massoud was carrying $52 million in cash when he was stopped during a visit to the UAE, and devastating criticism of the UK’s military operations in Afghanistan by US commanders. (The Guardian)

Despite of containing all the sensitive issues in world politics as well as the US military strategies to react to an imminent threat, the cables provide insulting descriptions of other leaders. Putin is described as an “alpha-dog”, Karzai is described as being “driven by paranoia”, and Angela Merkel allegedly “avoids risks and is rarely creative”. Furthermore, the cables name Saudi donors as the biggest financiers of terror groups, and provide a detailed account of an agreement between Washington and Yemen to cover up the use of US planes to bomb al-Qaida targets.

The cables also show the extent of US spying on its allies and the UN; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in “client states”; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; lobbying for US corporations’ and the measures US diplomats take to advance those who have access to them.

After these cables were released and published, Washington had a field day to get in touch with the leaders of the countries mentioned in the cables. The White House also released a statement condemning their release: “Such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the US for assistance in promoting democracy and open government. By releasing stolen and classified documents, WikiLeaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and works of these individuals.” (The Guardian)

Thus, we can see that the inclusiveness of diplomacy is a highly questionable and debatable topic. Every diplomat from every country will act and behave differently with diplomats from other countries. It is important to understand that if diplomats cannot act freely without the fear of scrutiny by the media, it is going to be difficult for them to do their jobs, thus resulting in halting relations with other countries. Always including the public and the media in diplomacy may not necessarily be a good thing. It is important for certain aspects of diplomacy to remain secret. This secrecy at times can also help cover any unethical doings of countries away from the media glare and this could cement the relations between the two countries. However, secret diplomacy has its pros and cons as well. It is important that the diplomats try and understand when they feel it right to include the media and public and when they should hold secret talks. Therefore, to avoid any diplomatic crisis, I feel it is important that diplomats should talk freely with one another so as to understand the point of view of each and every person.

The uprising power of Non Governmental Organisations

According to the Worls Banks description of Non Governmental Organisations (NGO), they try to pressure policy outcomes in the name of the poor, environment and basic social services.
NGO's are non profit organisations who work independently from governments and they exist in a variety of categories.






NGO's are becoming more powerful in changing policies and promoting for what they are standing for which is Human rights for all and other fundamental rights for Human around the globe. They are, especially with the help of the media, becoming more and more powerful.
Amnesty International for instance finds itself more often lobbying in the international stage promoting Human rights and campaigning for International criminal court and UN Torture treaty. It has 2.8 million supporters around the globe, so NGO'S are, indeed, becoming an important instrument in new diplomacy.
Some would argue that the balance of power is shifting and therefore the sovereignty of states are challenged. The excecutive director of NGO Monitor said that the annualy published Human Rights report is a very important and reliable information source for journalists, diplomats, political activist, policy advicers and citizens around the globe as many of the claims were provided by eyewitnesses and victims.
Critics would say that those informations provided by eyewitnesses might be just a chance to revolt against their opressive countries, nevertheleness it is a significant source of information for politicians.
Enviromental NGO's participate in different ways. They, for instance, receive documents, propose and advice diplomats which in turn could have an effect on their decisions. They were highly successful in the support of protecting the ozone layer and other climate change issues.


Norwegian NGO's were part of the Copenhagen summit in 1995. The New York Times editor Alejandro stated that the uprising participaion of NGO's is like a second superpower.
In my opinion NGO's are the most important factors in new diplomacy, as their voices are being heard by influence people e.g the World Bank which interacts with NGO's who have projects in developing countries and who lobby policy decisions to promote or advocate outcomes.