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(DOHA)—The 15th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES
officially opened this afternoon in Doha, with thousands of delegates
spread throughout the Doha Sheraton Conference Center. The
opening ceremony, filled with ceremonial music and dance, included
speeches from the Qatar Minister of the Environment, Abdullah bin
Aaboud al-Midhad, the Executive Director of the United Nations
Environment Programme, Achim Steiner, and the Secretary-General of
CITES, Willem Wijnstekers. The Environment Minister
expressed "pride and glory" for his country hosting a conservation
meeting of this importance -- the first time a CITES Meeting of the
Conference of the Parties has been held in the Middle East. Mr.
Wijnstekers averred that CITES is "in need of action more than words"
and wondered aloud if the developing world had been let down by the
Convention, which lacks full levels of capacity building and wildlife
law enforcement to support wildlife conservation activities where they
are perhaps needed most. Ironically, today was all about
words. Tomorrow too (adoption of the working program and rules of
procedure for the meeting, reports from the various Committee Chairs on
what has happened since the last CITES meeting in 2007, etc.). I'm
ready for more action than words. And the wildlife of the world, as the
Secretary-General says, needs it too.
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