Illegal Trafficking in Wildlife

And I had a chance to talk at length with Mr. Zhang, the research director of the program, who is an individual who has really committed his life to the work in building that center. I had a chance to hear him really speak with some justifiable pride about the facility that he helped build and I thought, as I was there, that that venture is also a face of what is a changing and growing China.

That Panda Research Center is located about 30 minutes outside Chengdu, which is a bustling industrial city, as many of you may know, in central China. And so as I toured Chengdu on the way to various meetings and then drove out to the Panda Research Center, I couldn't help but be struck by some of the connections between economic reform and the environment.

Chengdu, like the rest of China, displays the benefits that a more open economy, and I hope a more open society, can bring to ordinary people. As China develops, it has devoted more resources to environmental projects such as that panda center that's become, now, a very popular attraction for school groups and also tourists. That work has helped China develop its own conservation efforts and to educate the public about the wildlife of China and ecology. In fact, when we were there, we had a chance to meet two young American professionals that were trying to help China both on the research side, but also in developing a public outreach project. Yet, it's this same growth in China that threatens the traditional breeding grounds of the pandas.

So some might see this story as one of the inevitable conflict between economic growth and the environment, but I have a different view. I believe that our agenda of openness and economic reform trying to help capture the benefits of globalization can be very much connected to efforts to safeguard and to strengthen the environment.

When I served with Secretary James Baker at the Treasury Department in the late 1980s, the issue was brought to our attention about how some of the tax rules impeded an idea that was just starting to be promoted at that time, of debt-for-nature swaps. So we changed those rules and that approach created an opportunity that had widespread success. And then when Secretary Baker and I came to the State Department in 1989, we incorporated that idea into some of the debt forgiveness projects that were used for developing countries and Central and Eastern Europe, where some of the debt was forgiven, but some of the money was then allocated for local currency for local environmental projects. So it simultaneously eased financial burdens, but also invested in the environment.

We also could see, however, how some of the commercial drives could limit and overwhelm limited animal and maritime resources. So we pushed for a ban on the elephant ivory sales and also a successful ban on driftnet fishing. In my more recent experience, when I was the U.S. Trade Representative in the first term, I was very proud that the United States was the first country ever to insert environmental protection agreements into the core text of our international trade deals.

Lots of countries talk about linking trade to the environment, but the United States actually does it. The Central American Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA, actually requires the Central American countries to enforce their own environmental laws. Indeed, our free trade agreements go further, because we recognize that protecting the environment has to be about more than enforcing laws in developing countries, but also about building the capacity of poor nations to protect their own natural beauty and habitats.

As part of the work I did on CAFTA, I went to El Salvador and toured a micro-enterprise that employed about 12 or 15 Mayan women that were developing environmentally friendly products. The story of these products was that they were based on a combination of scientific research and old native recipes. The woman who ran the factory was carrying on the work of her father, who was a naturalist and learned about some of these products. And this woman who ran the small plant that employed the Mayan women saw a connection between the rich ecological heritage of El Salvador with the economic opportunities. And she was one of the local supporters of CAFTA because she could see how it would help her market her product and her produce in the organic supermarkets in the United States.

We also had a chance to work with the Humane Society of the United States to support humane animal farming programs and civil-society training in Central America, again trying to link the organic and humane farming techniques with commercial opportunities on the U.S. side.

The other trade agreements we had tried to customize similar goals. In Chile and Mexico -- Morocco, we signed environmental cooperation agreements together with the free trade agreements. For example, one of the projects in Chile would be to mitigate the environmental effects of the copper mining in the country, even as the trade agreement expanded the opportunities to sell copper products in the U.S. market. In all these trade agreements, what we tried to do was to strengthen the ability of local civil societies, concerned citizens and NGOs, to try to raise environmental concerns to their governments or, in some cases, to international dispute settlement panels.

I have long been a champion of open markets and increased trade. But I, and I know many others, know that we can't simply close our eyes to the increased risks that with more trade can come more illegal trade in environmentally-sensitive goods and services. That’s why I think we have a shared responsibility with other nations to try to pursue international environmental cooperation even as we pursue the international trade agreements. For example, ensuring the compliance with the CITES convention against trade in endangered species is a central goal in the environmental agreements that we've been pursuing in connection with our trade agenda.

During our discussions with Singapore for a free trade agreement, there were concerns that Singapore, as a major trading center, had become a transit point into Africa, to Asia for poached rhino horn from East Africa. So during our negotiations, we took steps to try to ensure that Singapore would not only fully implement the CITES obligations, but also crack down on wildlife products entering Singapore and even those passing through the port. So we were able not only to deal with the current problem, but frankly, help cut off others.

So last fall, I was very delighted when Assistant Secretary Claudia McMurray launched this new coalition to try to fight the black market trade in wildlife and wildlife parts, which is estimated at about $10 billion a year, and it's driving some species to the very brink of extinction. I'm very pleased that my old associates, the World Wildlife Fund, and a total of 11 nongovernmental organizations joined us as partners in this effort, along with the United Kingdom and India.

In our work on the issue of international whaling, I again had a chance to see how vital the connections with our NGO partners can be in terms of advocating policies in other countries. So in the past couple weeks, I’ve had a chance to compare notes in developing an international anti-whaling strategy with two close colleagues from my work at USTR, Patty Forkan of the Humane Society of the United States and Fred O’Regan of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

But of course, as Paula said, our environmental work extends far beyond animals. President Bush launched an Initiative Against Illegal Logging in 2003. And through this program, we’ve been able to devote some $4 million to reform the forest sector in Liberia, we initiated talks with Indonesia to try to combat illegal logging, and we pushed logging issues in our trade talks with southeast Asian countries such as Thailand and Malaysia.

Under Secretary Dobriansky and I have worked together on the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, as well as other partnerships like the Earth Observation Summit, because we want to try to build partnerships between both developed and developing countries and ways to try to use technology more effectively to try to support sustainable development.

Of course, in a world economy with a global environment, America will only be successful if we really build international coalitions. So I am especially pleased to see my friend and former colleague Yvonne Baki here. Yvonne and I worked first when she was Ambassador of Ecuador to the United States and then as Trade Minister. And I know she very much appreciated the opportunity of trade to create open and good jobs in Ecuador and other countries throughout Latin America. But Yvonne is also a committed environmentalist and a champion of efforts to try to protect endangered species. She helped build an international foundation to assist the treasures of a very special place, the Galapagos Islands.

Well, it turned out that one of Yvonne’s fellow board members and founders of the Galapagos Conservancy is a woman who has also distinguished herself as a leader on environmental issues, Bo Derek. Bo Derek has already been very generous in her public service on a number of issues, for which I thank her. She has spent the past five years as the Honorary Chair of the Veterans Affairs National Rehabilitation Special Events group, helping our veterans through visits to medical facilities, but also with various support activities, such as in sports and the arts.

But Bo has been particularly active in trying to work to protect animals. In addition to her work on the Galapagos Conservancy, she serves on a number of boards, including WildAid, which is trying to stop the illegal wildlife trade. She's taken up the cause of stopping the slaughter of horses in the United States for food export to Europe and testified before Congress with the National Horse Protection Coalition.

So given her interests and her public sense of service, we approached her about trying to help us with this new venture to try to stop illegal wildlife trafficking. So I'm very delighted and I want to thank her for generously agreeing to work with us on this. So I am privileged to introduce Bo Derek and to announce that she has agreed to become the Special Envoy of the Secretary of State for Wildlife Trafficking Issues.

Thanks very much.

(Applause.)

MS. DEREK: Well, I'm very pleased to be here today as part of the Department's celebration of Earth Day and as my new, I think kind of daunting, role as Special Envoy of the Secretary of State on Wildlife Trafficking.

As Deputy Secretary Zoellick mentioned, for the past six years I've served as Honorary Chair for the Department of Veterans Affairs National Rehabilitation Events, and what that consists of is four events a year for our disabled veterans, and now even our disabled active service men and women to come to our events. They're the largest of their kind in the world, where we have winter games, wheelchair games, Golden Age games, creative arts festivals, and they are the hallmark of rehabilitation in the nation. There's nothing like getting out on a mountain compared to a machine or physical therapy. So I've been doing that very happily and very proudly.

I now serve on the Board of WildAid, which is a U.S.-based international nongovernmental organization dedicated to eliminating illegal wildlife trafficking. My association with WildAid began five years ago when I joined the board of Minister Baki's foundation, the Galapagos Conservancy Ecuador. And we were having the most wonderful cruise -- we had a congressional delegation with us -- down in the Galapagos and Pete Knights of WildAid, who is here with us today, was -- I don't know how he positioned himself on our cruise, and I spent the next three days listening to Pete.

He talked, I listened, and I learned so much about our environment, about illegal wildlife trafficking. And from the moment he explained the slaughter of sharks for their fins, and realized that this is such a global problem, but I think the most important thing I took away from that cruise was that it's not hopeless. And I was so impressed with so many of Peter's ideas and solutions to the challenges of enabling people and wildlife to live together.

And I think what impressed me the most is so much of this can be done in my lifetime. I have no patience and so many -- there are so many problems and causes and wonderful things that I wish I had the time or, frankly, the intelligence to get involved in, but on top of it they're just so long term. This is something so important. We're at a critical time right now where it makes the difference between survival and extinction in so many species. So the idea that so much of this can be done in my lifetime, and I think basically all of it will be, it really intrigued me. And from that moment on, I knew I wanted to be part of this cause.

You know, so many -- I'm guilty as well so many thousands of Americans travel overseas unwittingly buy ivory, coral, tortoise shell products, things made from rhino horn and tiger bone. I have Shatoosh in my drawer. I had no idea. It was just super soft, was all I knew about it. Now I know differently and this is what I'm committed to fighting now.

And so much of this is public awareness, so I know my participation in this will be small compared to all those people actively working in the field, but I might be able to help with public awareness. We're just beginning. This just happened literally, I think, about midnight last night this became official -- my new role. So I'm excited to find out really what I can do and how I can help.

The Coalition is bringing the public and private sector together to raise public and political awareness of the wildlife trafficking problem and to help countries work together to share information and improve wildlife law enforcement. CAWT will help educate and convince people around the world that their quality of life is diminished, not improved, by purchasing endangered and threatened wildlife products.

I believe in the goals of the CAWT and we'll work to make it successful. And I just, I thank you, Deputy Secretary Zoellick, for granting me the privilege of serving my country in this small way, but also the earth as we get ready for Earth Day tomorrow. Thank you.

(Applause.)

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