EN Official Journal of the European Union CE 88/704

(2004/C 88 E/0726)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0681/04

by Proinsias De Rossa (PSE) to the Commission

(9 March 2004)

Subject: Bushmeat – poverty assessments

Following the European Parliament's support for the De Rossa report on Petition 461/2000, will the Commission fund research into the importance of bushmeat/wildlife in poor people's livelihoods, particularly in West and Central Africa?

What action has been taken by the Commission to integrate criteria into its poverty assessments and country strategy papers that take account of the importance that wildlife/bushmeat has in the livelihoods of the poor in West and Central African countries? Will the Commission publish these criteria? And will measures be taken to integrate these considerations into existing strategies and assessments?

Joint answer

to Written Questions E-0676/04, E-0677/04, E-0678/04 and E-0681/04

given by Mr Nielson on behalf of the Commission

(27 April 2004)

With respect to Country Strategy Papers, the Mid Term Review currently being conducted requires, for African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, a Country Environmental Profile (CEP) as an annex to the review documents. This CEP should identify important environmental issues, including those of biodiversity and bushmeat and thus be a basis for further dialogue with the partner country in order to address the problems. Specific criteria remain to be decided.

The Commission does not carry out its own poverty assessments, but uses those carried out by other donors or national governments.

It is important to note that the programming of resources, in particular for the European Development Fund (EDF), had already been largely completed when Parliament adopted the De Rossa report, and accordingly the margins for action were rather limited. In the 9th EDF, limited amounts were allocated specifically to the environment. The policy for resource allocation is focused on budgetary support and support for sectoral programmes. Specific research projects on the problems quoted in the written question would need to be examined from this perspective. Furthermore, within the EU's 6th Framework Programme on Research and Technological Development (FP6) one of the work programmes specifically concerns biodiversity, and could therefore be used for research on bushmeat issues. Details of this policy, and of eligibility for participation, are available on (http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/iscp/index_en.html).

There are, however, some responses to the issues raised within the framework of actions ongoing or starting soon: in particular, the programmes for alternatives to poaching (the Congo, Cameroon, Gabon), financing of specific market and setting surveys and establishing an observatory, Ecopas (Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso) and Ecofac (six central Africa countries). Concerning the latter, the preparation of the 4th phase is in hand and will take some of these aspects specifically into account.

Furthermore, the recent call for proposals under the environment budgetline invited in particular proposals that are relevant to actions in the biodiversity action plan for economic and development cooperation.

The Commission agrees that timber concession wildlife management must form a key part of the response to the bushmeat crisis. For this reason the Commission is supporting the World Wide Fund for Nature with a EUR 1,4 million grant to work in Gabon with private forest concessionaires to find ways of controlling hunting and poaching in private forest concessions. In addition, the Forest ecosystems in Central Africa (Ecofac) programme has begun to define protocols for collaboration with the private sector to address the unsustainable hunting of bushmeat in industrial forest concessions.