Banning almost all cross-border trade in ivory, as the United Nations did in 1989, doesn't seem to have achieved its stated aim, that of ending a smuggling business worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Soon the world will be able to assess the effects of a move in the other direction: a decision to let China bid at a one-off auction of legal ivory from four African countries whose elephant populations have stabilised. Hitherto Japan is the only country to have been authorised to make legal bids.rnAfter some hard talking by Chinese officials who say they have clamped down on the black market, and campaigning by environmental groups that disagree, the decision went China's way at a meeting in Geneva of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
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