[WEBCAST] Wildlife Trade Under Scrutiny
VIEW EVENT DETAILSThe Global Picture, China’s Role, And What It Has to Do With the Coronavirus
Illegal wildlife trade has been a lucrative business for criminals with an estimated value of $ 20 billion a year – yet it has largely been treated as a low-priority issue by the global community, at least until very recently. While we don’t know yet for sure how COVID-19 crossed species barriers to infect humans, initial suggestions it may have been linked to wildlife trade and concern over future pandemic risk have triggered a renewed focus on wildlife trade in China and other countries around the world. China began a widespread crackdown on illegal wildlife trade in early February and banned the commercial breeding and trade in (almost) all terrestrial wild animal species later in February – at least for the consumption of food.
While a minority of physical markets across Asia offer wild animal products, trade has long proliferated online, and trafficking is often orchestrated by international criminal networks. Wildlife trade is moreover global in nature, far from restricted to Asia. What are the interlinkages between global wildlife trade, its demand, use, and different regulatory approaches? What are the impacts of poaching, illegal trade and wildlife farming? What are the evolving perspectives on the demand for wildlife products? And how should we judge recent policy and regulatory changes to wildlife trade in China and elsewhere?
Join the webcast with the Environmental Investigation Agency’s (EIA) Aron White in conversation with Nadya Hutagalung, UN Environment Ambassador and media personality, with inputs from Lixin Huang, former president of the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Sarah H. Olson, Associate Director for Epidemiology for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Health Program.
About the Webcast
This webcast is co-hosted by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).
It is open to the public. You can register for the webcast to participate on the conference platform Zoom.
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About Members-only Q&A
Asia Society Members have the possibility to register for a 30 minutes Zoom meeting directly after the webcast to ask further questions and talk to the experts. These meetings are exclusively for members and limited to 30 participants. How to become a Member?
Aron White is a Wildlife Campaigner and China Specialist at the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). Aron has worked on wildlife trade and conservation issues for over six years, following a degree in Chinese at the University of Cambridge, and has lived in Beijing and Taipei. Aron’s work at EIA focuses primarily on trade in big cats, and wildlife trade more generally in China. He has been following wildlife policy developments in the wake of COVID-19 closely, and his work in 2020 so far as covered multiple policy analyses and recommendations, as well as a bilingual report revealing the role of traditional Chinese medicine companies and government agencies in commercial trade in leopard bone.