See link for photo.
At the end of this month in Nairobi, Kenya, several tonnes of seized ivory is to be set alight and burned to highlight the campaign against elephant poaching.
The event is part of the activities surrounding the Inaugural Giants Club Summit in Nairobi on April 29th.
Uganda Tourism Board (UTB) is working with the Giants Club initiative to promote media coverage for the event.
The illegal killing of elephants and the trade in their ivory is out of control across Africa, undermining ecosystem integrity, economic development and the rule of law. In the last three years 100,000 elephants have been killed to supply ivory to illegal markets in Asia. At current rates, African elephants could disappear from the wild in our lifetime.
The Giants Club was founded by President Kenyatta with the presidents of Botswana, Gabon and Uganda, with support from Space for Giants and its patron, Evgeny Lebedev, the owner of The Independent and London Evening Standard newspapers.
President Yoweri Museveni is to participate in an unprecedented gathering of African heads of state, global business leaders, and A-list celebrities, to plot a new African-led path to ending poaching on the continent.
The event, in Kenya on April 29th and 30th, is the first of its kind.
It is being convened by Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta as part of his membership – with the presidents of Uganda, Gabon, and Botswana – of the Giants Club.
The Giants Club is a select coalition of visionary African leaders enlisting the power of business and entertainment superstars to accelerate progress towards saving the African elephant from extinction.
The Summit takes place immediately before President Kenyatta destroys his country’s 120-tonne stockpile of seized ivory on the afternoon of April 30.
The Giants Club objective is to combat the poaching crisis by bringing together leaders of African elephant-range states, enlightened heads of major businesses operating in Africa, and leading elephant-protection experts, to provide the political will, financial resources and technical capacity that are so urgently required to save Africa’s remaining elephant populations.
Working in support of the Elephant Protection Initiative (EPI) and the African Elephant Action Plan (AEAP), our goal is to effectively protect at least 40,000 elephants – 10% of the continental total – by 2020.
http://www.busiweek.com/