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Helen Clark, who has been appointed to lead the investigation into the World Health Organization response to the coronavirus pandemic, said in a recent interview: “The brief we’ve been given is, what do we need to stop the world being blindsided again by a crisis like this?” While I for one am delighted with the choice of Helen Clark, given her reputation as a “fighter” and someone who will push the boundaries of the scope of the review if needed. But even she will only be able to push these boundaries so far. We must see clearly that the scope of this review is far too narrow because it is only investigating the role of the [...]

Perception management involves 3 techniques: deletions, distortions and generalisations. These techniques have been used consistently to divert attention away from the legal trade in endangered species and the failure of the system set up to regulate it. The aim has been to keep the public focused squarely on the problem of illegal trade and, in the main, this has worked. When the failures suddenly enter public awareness, as in the case of the zoonotic and legal trade origin of Covid-19, the stakeholders usually scramble to acknowledge an ‘isolated incident’ or ‘single point of failure’ but refuse to talk about the long-standing systemic issues. We can no longer tolerate the perception management that the legal trade in [...]

I would like to introduce a new pillar to the Nature Needs More strategy – a new online magazine titled HowToSpendItEthically.Org: https://howtospenditethically.org/ We have created this online magazine, with articles primarily targeting the consumers of wildlife products, because there is nothing like it currently and there is an urgent need to educate consumers. For more than a year we have tried and struggled to get the mainstream media interested in investigating the legal trade in species, with very limited success. This seems incredible given the massive scale of this utterly destructive trade. We particularly tried to get coverage of the glaring mismatch between the vast profits made by business compared to the near-total lack [...]

Why one trick pony? Because crocodile farming, in Australia, is the go-to example pro sustainable-use organisations spout to ‘validate’ the sustainable-use model. In articles, at conferences (including CITES CoP18) and in workshops it is the only example regurgitated as the justification of the ideology. And why do I use the word ideology? Because, as I wrote in a September 2019, after attending CITES CoP18, there is no proof the sustainable-use theory works in practice as there is no useful or reliable trade analytics from 44 years of CITES operation. Sustainable-use is an ideology, not a proven strategy. In late 2019, work undertaken by world-leading experts in trade analytics confirmed that the CITES trade database is badly designed and [...]

No one can really predict how the world will look after the COVID-19 pandemic. But if you could write one email that had the potential to help change the world for the better, would you do it? Recent weeks have made it clear how much we are all connected and that we are all in this together. With the panic buying of toilet paper, it has also highlighted many societies have become a too self-absorbed - pardon the pun! We are certainly at a unique point in our collective history. While we are in a time of social-distancing, self-isolation or even quarantine, how can we use this to let our respective governments know that we expect to emerge [...]

On the 18th January, Nature Needs More published a blog regarding Mainstream Media (MSM)’s attention deficit, stating over the past 12 months we had tried to interest MSM in the story that the flaws in the regulation of the legal trade in endangered species are enabling the illicit trade to thrive. Several angles have been tried, when contacting investigative, environmental and business journalists through to editors and editors-in-chiefs. The blog went on to ask, should we really be shocked that MSM’s investigative and business journalists don’t see the scale of this story? Let’s face it, they have missed so many important stories in the recent past, from Enron to the global financial system and bankruptcy [...]

Over the past 12 months Nature Needs More has tried to interest the mainstream media (MSM) in the story of how the flaws in the regulation of the legal trade in endangered species are enabling the illicit trade to thrive. Several angles have been tried, when contacting investigative, environmental and business journalists through to editors and editors-in-chiefs. Whilst conservation media does some great investigative pieces, these stories don’t reach the general public. And, we cannot rely on social media, which in the first instance was simply too noisy and is now not trusted, given the levels of fake news and orchestrated disinformation campaigns aided by algorithms which take the echo-chamber effect to new orders of magnitude. We could [...]

In 2020, Nature Needs More has a big program of work. This year, while we continue the projects pushing for the modernisation of CITES and our work on consumer demand reduction, we will also ramp up our challenge to business; specifically, industries making vast profits from the legal trade in endangered species. As a reminder, this legal trade was valued at US$320 billion annually as long ago as 2012 in a UK Parliament Report and a 2016 European Parliament Report the legal trade in wildlife into the EU alone is worth EUR 100 billion annually (US$112 billion annually). To explain why this issue will get greater focus, let me start with an example: [...]