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Mention the word slavery and for most of us it brings to mind images of ships full of people in chains, transported from Africa to be sold to plantation owners in the USA and the Caribbean. Sadly, too few lessons have been learnt from this horrendous disregard of human life and today modern slavery is all around us. The last decade has seen a growing focus on the tragedy of modern day slavery, with governments around the world either enacting legislation aimed at tackling this crisis or considering doing so. This is yet another example highlighting that after decades of voluntary governance schemes and fair-trade initiatives, too many industries aren’t monitoring their supply chains. It [...]

How many reports will be published, talking about the desperate need for more financial support to stop biodiversity loss, which never talk about how to create an ongoing, reliable funding stream? The problem of ineffective monitoring and regulation of the trade in endangered species has been known for decades. Knowing the problem hasn’t yet led to anything other than piecemeal investments and, as a result, unsustainable over-exploitation for trade remains a major contributor to the extinction crisis. This was highlighted again this month, with an addition to the growing number of papers being written about the legal trade in wildlife; in this recent paper the authors state, “A global understanding of carrying capacity and offtake levels is [...]

As we approach the 2021 Lunar New Year, on the 12th of February, it is a good time to reflect on this important holiday. The Lunar New Year celebration is the time to usher in prosperity, luck and good fortune for the year ahead. The holiday emphasises the importance of family and has been called the largest annual human migration on earth, as the many people who left regional areas for better job opportunities in cities, travel home to see families. For some parents, who had to leave children with their grandparents in home villages, to look for work, the Lunar New Year holiday may be the first time they will have seen their children in 12 months. [...]

Reflecting on a year, like no other in living memory, I felt drawn to Charles Dickens’ story A Christmas Carol, first published on the 19 December 1843. With the many versions, for both stage and screen, and the continued popularity of the book, why does this haunting tale still resonate with so many people? Dickens’ wrote the book to voice his concern about injustice and the treatment of the poor. The greed and neglect of the most vulnerable in society by the rich, as symbolised by Jacob Marley. The ghost of Marley, who in life was described as a 'good man of business’, appears as a warning to his partner [...]

In recent days Formula 1 unveiled its 2021 calendar, calling it the ‘biggest ever F1 season’ but there is a glaring omission in the schedule. Where is Viet Nam? Now, Vietnamese organisers have said their race, originally scheduled for April, may never take place. Why? Doubts about the Viet Nam event arose after Nguyen Duc Chung, the then Chairman of the City of Hanoi, and a major supporter of the F1 event, was arrested on corruption charges. F1 has only announced that the Hanoi race will be cancelled for the 2021 calendar. Formula 1 is a global spectacular, an elite event and brand that cannot afford its reputation to be tarnished. Given its global profile and media [...]

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 [...]