DOHA, Qatar, March 22, 2010 (ENS)
Proposed trade regulations for red and pink precious corals used in jewelry were turned down Sunday by governments at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, CITES, meeting in Doha.
According to the U.S. proposal, the greatest risk to coral populations is fishing to supply international trade, with landings that have declined by 60 to 80 percent since the 1980s, and reductions in the size structure of populations in fished areas equivalent to a loss of 80 to 90 percent of the corals' reproductive modules.
The proposed listing of red and pink corals in CITES Appendix II would have allowed trade under a strict permit system. It would have ensured that countries had legally binding measures governing the international trade of this group of corals and that stocks of these slow-growing, long-lived species were sustainably harvested.
But in December 2009, an expert panel of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization concluded that the available evidence did not support the proposal to include the entire family Corallidae in Appendix II. The panel said seven of the species in this family of corals did not meet the biological criteria for an Appendix II listing.
Lack of sufficient scientific evidence and the impact on the livelihoods of costal local populations depending on corals were the main arguments advanced by the opponents to this proposal.