Forestry, fisheries and environment minister Dion George hopes the G20 members including China can reach an agreement against illicit wildlife tracking and poaching this year.
Speaking in an interview during a voyage on the SA Agulhas II, he said: “I’m working on a G20 memorandum of understanding to counter illicit wildlife trafficking and several countries have indicated they are interested in it.” George heads the G20 Environment and Climate Sustainability Working Group under South Africa’s presidency.
“I have met with the head of the Chinese counter-poaching facility and he is very willing to cooperate ... I would like to see us sign an agreement, to sit down together and announce it specifically with China. I would like to make that a part of our G20,” he said.
“Illicit wildlife trafficking is a problem that will not be fixed with firefighting on the ground,” the minister said. “There are the hands, the people who are doing the poaching and harvesting of the product, and if you chop off a hundred hands or a thousand there will be more,” he said.
We’ve done well on marine protected areas but we’ve done less well on land.
— Dion George, minister of forestry, fisheries and the environment
“You have to strengthen the front line anyway, and then you need to look at the head, the international syndicates. We were working closely with the US and other countries on that, but the US has defunded fish and wildlife [conservation]... I am scheduled to have a conversation with the [incoming] US chargé d’affaires.”
To stop abalone poaching and other types of illicit wildlife trafficking, South Africa must tackle the global and local systems which give rise to them, George told TimesLIVE Premium.
George said communities he met while touring harbours in the Western Cape recently complained they “lack fish stock” and that the harbours, with their derelict buildings and wrecks, were barely or not operating.
“The harbours have been neglected for so long, for example in Hout Bay, which has become the epicentre of abalone poaching,” he said. “We are engaging with public works because they are responsible for buildings ... but this is an big issue because they have got all these other priorities.”
George said his department will try to fix the issues they can, such as “the cleanliness of the harbours, to get rid of the wrecks that are lying around, to improve security and signage”.
The department has made a plan with the South African Maritime Safety Authority to start removing the wrecks from mid-June.
On South Africa’s commitment to the global biodiversity goal of protecting 30% of the world’s lands, oceans and freshwater, George said the country was heading in the right direction with its marine protected areas — despite the limitations of the South African Navy in enforcing them.
“We’ve done well on marine protected areas, but we’ve done less well on land because you have the abrasion between the wildlife and people, and that is complicated.”
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