Ivory demand turns Laos into world’s fastest growing market
NAIROBI: Surging demand from Chinese visitors has made Laos the world’s fastest-growing market for ivory, conservation group Save the Elephants said on Thursday.
China, currently the world’s largest ivory market, has pledged to phase out its sales by the end of the year, but with ivory trinkets still popular among Chinese consumers, demand is shifting across the border.
Ivory sales have increased dramatically in Laos, Save the Elephants said in its new report, blaming lax enforcement of antiivory laws and lower prices.
Chinese visitors buy 80 percent of the ivory on sale in the landlocked southeast Asian country, the report said, while in the two main ivory marketplaces in the capital Vientiane and Luang Prabang, the number of shops increased more than 10 fold between 2013 and last year.
“Although we’ve had much significant movement on curbing the ivory trade, the earth is not out of the woods yet,” said Save the Elephants’ founder Iain Douglas-Hamilton at the report’s launch in Nairobi.
Laos is a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which means ivory trafficking is a crime, but the report said Laotian authorities barely enforce anti-ivory laws and only one seizure has been made in the country since it joined the convention in 2004. AFP