The chief executive and the Executive Council has announced a three-step plan to completely phase out the local trade in elephant hunting trophies and ivory carvings by 2021, but environmentalists are calling on them to speed things up.
Hong Kong, one of the world’s biggest transit hubs and markets for contraband ivory, has been under global pressure to enact a full ban of the trade. While announcing the proposed legislative amendments, Secretary for the Environment Wong Kam-sing reiterated the government’s determination to protect endangered species.
“Hong Kong has a duty to be a part of international efforts and practices in enhancing protection for elephants,” he said, according to a government release.
The proposed amendments to the Protection of Endangered Species of Animals and Plants Ordinance, which is scheduled to be submitted to the Legislative Council by the first half of next year, would immediately ban the import and re-export of ivory after it’s passed. Traders will then be banned from importing and re-exporting all ivory items acquired before a 1975 convention regulating the trade in endangered species three months later.
A grace period of five years would then take effect. All possession licences to trade legal ivory stocks issued, extended, renewed or varied before Dec. 31, 2021 will be expired by default.
The measures were first discussed in June after Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying had pledged in his policy address to explore enacting laws to ban the local ivory trade.
Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department Director Leung Siu-fai said the government would not offer any compensation to ivory traders, saying a five-year grace period should be enough for them to offload their stockpile, according to EJ Insight.
Meanwhile, the government is also reportedly considering raising the maximum penalty for smuggling and illegal trading of endangered species to HKD10 million and 10 years’ imprisonment.
The plan to grant traders a five-year grace period has drawn criticism from environmentalists. Earlier in June this year, lawmaker Elizabeth Quat challenged the government’s remarks that local ivory trade was “generally inactive”. SCMP reports that Quat asked, “If the trade is not active anymore, why is there a need for another five years?”, during a LegCo environmental affairs panel meeting.
However, Hong Kong and Kowloon Ivory Manufacturers Association President So Chi-keung criticised the ban, saying turning a legal commercial event into an illegal one overnight is “unfair”, reports Passion Times.
Chu Chun-pong, Chairman of the Hong Kong Ivory Legitimate Licensing Association, told Apple Daily that the industry owns billions of dollars worth of ivory products, and said it would be impossible to sell all the stock “in this generation”, let alone in five years. So threatened to file for judicial review if the government refuses to compensate ivory traders.
As of September 2016, there are reportedly 370 licensed traders in Hong Kong, who own a total of around 70 tonnes of legal ivory.
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