Mr President, obviously it will not be possible in five minutes to do justice to the issue. I wish to begin by thanking my colleagues in Parliament for the opportunity to have this debate. It is important that a petition signed by 1.9 million citizens of Europe should be given a hearing in this House. For a while that looked unlikely, so I thank everybody who worked so hard to ensure that it did. I want to thank in particular Mr Corrie, the rapporteur for the Committee on Development and Cooperation, who also helped to prepare this report, because this was an enhanced cooperation report shared by the Committee on Petitions and the Development Committee. At this point I would like to make clear that this report does not deal with hunting in Europe. Therefore the three amendments tabled are not necessary and I would ask colleagues not to support them. 'Bushmeat' or 'wild meat' describes the food product of wild animals, whether consumed locally or traded commercially. Although the overuse of bushmeat is a fast-growing problem everywhere, this report concentrates on Africa because the bushmeat problem there is the most significant and best-described in the literature. However, the illegal trade in the meat of wild animals is not limited to Africa. In Asia many species are unsustainably exploited, either to provide food for the pet trade or because people believe that eating specific animal parts can cure disease or strengthen their sexual capacities. The trade in wildlife in South America is also growing and wild animals such as monkeys, birds, capybara and other large rodents, as well as tapirs, armadillos and deer, are for sale. In principle any wild animal can be used to provide a market with bushmeat. In Africa more than 50 species are for sale in markets and restaurants, including antelopes, monkeys, apes, pangolins, pigs, large rodents, elephants, reptiles – such as snakes, lizards and crocodiles, invertebrates – such as snails and insects, and birds such as hornbills. However, the bulk of the trade is made up of mammals, usually weighing more than one kilogram. Current estimates show that bushmeat is being consumed on a massive scale across the humid tropics, particularly in Africa. The most recent estimates of the annual wild meat harvest are 23 500 tonnes in Sarawak, 67 000 to 164 000 tonnes in the Brazilian Amazon and between one million and five million tonnes – off the bone – in the Congo Basin. This results in overexploitation. In Africa, in 2000, at least one species of red colobus monkey probably became extinct due to hunting, and many other species are expected to follow shortly. Livelihoods and biodiversity suffer as a result of overexploitation of wildlife for food. Of the estimated 1.2 billion people who live on less than the equivalent of one euro a day, about 250 million live in agriculturally marginal areas, and a further 350 million live in or near forests, of whom an estimated 60 million are indigenous people living in forests. A recent study by the UK Department for International Development has estimated that 150 million people – one-eighth of the world’s poorest – regard wildlife as an important livelihood asset. Therefore it is clearly not an easy problem to get to grips with. Human population growth, poverty, bad governance, and the commercialisation of consumption and distribution of poached animals are the underlying causes of the bushmeat problem. Natural resources cannot replenish themselves in the face of growing demand. Small stable rural communities could subsist on the natural resources in their environment without depleting them. However, the human population explosion, combined with an expanding urban – and world – market system, has changed this. The exploitation of natural resources has become unsustainable, with the developed industrialised nations dominating the acquisition of resources. Poverty inevitably outweighs concerns about conservation and makes enforcement measures seem unjustified and hard to implement where people depend on bushmeat to survive. Many of the underlying causes of the unsustainable bushmeat trade also cause poverty: weak local governance and unfavourable terms of trade. It is therefore important that the conservation and development communities should work together with indigenous populations and civil society on this shared agenda in order to address the underlying causes of poverty and biodiversity loss. I have listed about 20 issues which the Commission should address. Resources are obviously required. We have avoided putting a figure on those resources, but the Commission should commit a specific amount of resources to ensure that this matter is dealt with effectively and that it is possible to work with the relevant organisations and with the people on the ground who either depend on bushmeat for income or for protein to survive.

Political group: PSE