By Emmanuel Koro

4 December 2025, Samarkand City, Uzbekistan                                                                                       

Southern Africa’s leading community conservation voices have delivered their clearest warning yet to the UN wildlife trade regulator CITES, declaring that they will no longer accept being sidelined from decisions that shape the lives, land rights and livelihoods of millions of rural Africans.

Delivered before the end of a heated week of negotiations at the CITES CoP20 meeting in Samarkand, the message reflects what community leaders describe as a breaking point after years of marginalisation.

The growing frustration centres on the UN agency’s continued failure to establish a Rural Communities’ Sub-Committee, a longstanding proposal first introduced at CoP17 in Johannesburg and revisited unsuccessfully at CoP18 in Geneva and CoP19 in Panama.

Despite repeated commitments by CITES Parties to enhance community participation, the proposal failed once more this week. Southern African representatives who have championed community-based conservation for decades; responded with disappointment.

“Our patience has run out,” the President of the Community Leaders Network (CLN), Dr Rodgers Lubilo said.

“If CITES can’t reform itself to accommodate genuine community dialogue, then communities will have no choice but to force it to do so. We will not sit back while decisions are made about our wildlife, our land and our future without our involvement.”

He warned that wildlife conservation will ultimately collapse if the people living with elephants, lions, buffaloes and other high-risk species remain excluded.

For decades, rural communities have carried the human and economic cost of wildlife through crop destruction, livestock losses and sometimes fatal encounters and restrictions of benefits and exclusion from engaging with CITES decision-makers is a missed opportunity for collective conservation efforts.

CLN President Dr Rodgers Lubilo said the exclusion of communities from engaging directly with CITES decision-makers “is in sharp contrast” with acceptance of Western animal-rights extremists NGOs, which hold “disproportionate influence over CITES through sustained funding and lobbying.”

He noted that these groups invariably campaign for policies that undermine African conservation models built on sustainable use, community ownership and legal benefit-sharing.

CLN President, Dr Lubilo said that by delaying the establishment of a Communities Sub-Committee, yet yielding to the anti-trade influence of animal rights extremist NGOs, the anti-trade majority CITES member countries are “entrenching a colonial model of conservation” in which Africans are denied trade, particularly Southern Africans – then in turn beg for conservation funds from anti-trade Westerners.

The failure to adopt the Rural Communities’ Sub-Committee, he said, “strips millions of Africans” of their right to participate meaningfully in decisions that determine their livelihoods.

“Inviting us to speak after decisions are already drafted is not dialogue, it is tokenism,” said Dr Lubilio, reacting to the CITES Secretariat’s pre-vote recommendations that generally influence how its member countries would align their votes, using the same thinking. “We are tired of symbolic consultation.

CLN President, Dr Lubilo warned that without meaningful reform, CITES risks losing legitimacy in regions where it most needs local support.

Meanwhile, some African countries delegates attending CITES CoP20 in Samarkand City, Uzbekistan, suggested SADC governments could coordinate political pressure at the African Union or through regional parliaments to demand “a rebalancing” of global wildlife governance.

“We cannot continue under a system where the people living with wildlife are treated as an afterthought,” said CLN President, Dr Lubilo. “If CITES wants to be relevant in the twenty-first century, it must modernise. Reform is not optional, it is overdue.”

Meanwhile, tensions escalated further this week after the UK-based Born Free Foundation announced plans to mobilise financial support for the cash-strapped CITES Secretariat.

SCLN President Dr Rodgers Lubilo expressed concern that such funding could entrench the influence of anti-trade NGOs within the UN agency.

“This raises serious questions about impartiality,” he said. “If CITES becomes financially dependent on organisations opposed to sustainable use, how can communities trust the process?”

Elsewhere, former CITES Secretary-General (1982–1990) and current IWMC-World Conservation Trust President Eugene Lapointe issued an even more direct warning.

He argued that allowing NGOs to finance the Convention would amount to buying influence and would undermine its neutrality. Citing the International Whaling Commission where he observed NGO-driven projects have pushed the body beyond its original mandate; Mr Lapointe described the idea to have NGOs fund CITES as “totally unacceptable”.

Only governments who are its members, he said, should be responsible for resolving CITES’ financial difficulties through fixed Party contributions.

He predicted strong protest if NGO funding is formally discussed in plenary on Friday, 5 December, the last day of CITES CoP20. “Don’t accept that,” Mr Lapointe said.

CLN President Dr Lubilo issued a stark warning before the end of CITES CoP20 this week, saying African communities “are no longer requesting recognition, but demanding it.”

“If CITES fails to embrace genuine inclusion, he said, communities may shift land from wildlife to agriculture or pursue alternative, smart, legal and non-CITES trade regulations pathways recently suggested by experts.

“Communities, not CITES, not animal rights extremist NGOs – have always and continue to hold the fate of African wildlife in their hands,” he warned.

About the writer:  Emmanuel Koro is Johannesburg-based international award-winning environmental journalist who writes independently on environmental and developmental issues.