Intergovernmental Meeting on Great Apes and First GRASP Council Meeting in Kinshasa

The first Intergovernmental Meeting on Great Apes and the Great Apes Survival Project (GRASP) was convened from 5-9 September 2005 in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, at the same time as the first GRASP Council Meeting. The final report and various documents are available for download at the following address:
www.unep.org/grasp/Meetings/IGM-kinshasa/Outcomes/index-reports.asp
There were over 200 international delegates and more than 300 participants from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 18 of the 23 great ape range states from Africa and Southeast Asia were represented, 9 of them by Ministerial-level delegations; there were 29 GRASP non-governmental organization Partners, 7 donor countries (including the UK Minister of Biodiversity), the European Commission, the Central Africa Forest Commission (COMIFAC), 3 GRASP Patrons, and 3 of the biodiversity-related conventions. Finally, there were representatives of the scientific community, indigenous groups and the private sector. With so many political and scientific heavyweights gathered in one place, there might at last be a glimmer of hope on the horizon.
At the meeting, delegates signed the Kinshasa Declaration, affirming political will at the highest level for the first time in the history of the great apes; participants also adopted a global strategy for the survival of great apes, among other documents.
Now the Democratic Republic of the Congo - the only country with 3 great ape species, one species and one subspecies being endemic - has the incentive to show that it really is willing to protect the highly endangered apes living in this country.
Even assuming that the political will remains after the euphoria of the meeting has died down, huge problems remain. If the orang-utan habitat countries, with their relatively developed political and social infrastructure, are finding it difficult to control illegal logging, palm-oil plantations and smuggling, what prospect is there that African countries, which mostly lack such infrastructure, will manage to take control of the bushmeat trade, illegal mining, and the trade in live gorillas and chimpanzees, especially in the face of continual civil strife and entrenched corruption?
Yet throughout the Central African region there are individuals and community groups who have been taking enormous risks to protect gorillas and chimpanzees and to preserve their habitat, regarding it as their precious heritage; some have been killed doing so. But these local groups and individuals desperately need the support of their governments to be fully effective. After the Kinshasa Declaration, perhaps at last they will get it.

Bushmeat overview

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