Khaberni - The UAE government has issued a comprehensive set of updated laws to support and develop agricultural and veterinary quarantines, protect new plant species, and regulate international trade in animals and plants threatened with extinction, reflecting the state's efforts to continue enhancing the legal and legislative framework for these vital sectors.
The new law supports the country's direction in the field of biodiversity conservation and enhances legal protection for animal and plant species threatened with extinction, and regulates their international trade movement in line with the international convention concerned with the trade of certain endangered species.
This law replaces the Federal Law No. (11) of 2002 concerning the regulation and monitoring of international trade in endangered animals and plants, which has undergone no amendments for more than 22 years. The new law has been issued to keep up with developments in the protection of endangered species, to reinforce the state's compliance with the requirements of the international convention on trade, and to support the effective enforcement of the law through granting the national administrative authority broader powers, thereby facilitating swift action and implementation of control measures, and expanding the scope of legal protection, especially in light of periodic amendments to the appendices of the aforementioned convention and its procedures.
The law includes several provisions that involve introducing precise and new definitions for certain concepts such as: endangered species, pre-convention samples, falcon passport, shipment, agricultural health certificate, and updating the wording of other legal definitions and terms to be more consistent with the state's legislative system. The provisions of the law apply to all the territories of the state including the free zones concerning samples and species listed in the appendices to the law, and any amendments made to them.
The law regulates the prohibition of import, export, re-export, transit, or entry from the sea of any endangered specimen through all the state's border ports, enhancing the control over the state's borders. It also defines the competencies of the national administrative authority "Ministry of Climate Change and Environment" more comprehensively, making it the responsible entity for implementing the provisions of the law, monitoring the enforcement of international trade regulations in endangered animal and plant samples, and combating illicit trade, and the competent entity for issuing certificates regulating international trade in endangered species and deciding any necessary conditions for issuing the certificate. Furthermore, the law grants the national administrative authority executive powers not present in the previous law, such as the disposal of confiscated samples of endangered animal and plant species pursuant to a judicial verdict, as well as adding a new legal provision concerning transit samples which requires halting the transit process and detaining the samples if there is suspicion of not obtaining the export or re-export certificate or if the data provided does not match the
The law has tightened the penalties, with fines raised to not less than 30 thousand dirhams and not exceeding two million dirhams, with added prison penalties of up to 4 years, obligating the violator to bear all financial costs incurred due to the seizure including costs of custody and transportation of the samples and disposal, as well as maintenance of the living animals and plants during the detention period, along with ruling for deportation of the foreign violator in case of re-offense. The concerned entity that carried out the seizure of any of the violating samples is also obligated to notify the national administrative authority of the seizure operation and hand over the site of seizure for completing the procedures in this regard, thus enabling the national administrative authority to perform its supervisory and executive role, and unify procedures to ensure consistency in the application of the law. The law also defined new mechanisms for technical coordination with the competent authorities for purposes of implementing the provisions of the law, whereby the new law mandates the national administrative authority to coordinate with the Emirates Institution for Medicine in cases where any sample from the species listed in the appendices falls under the institution's jurisdiction.
