KAREN L. STEUER

Karen Steuer joined International Fund for Animal Welfare in 1999 to direct the organization's international efforts to reduce commercial exploitation of wildlife. Campaigns within the program area include efforts to eliminate the Canadian seal hunt, commercial whaling, and the ivory trade; working with the traditional Chinese medicine industry to develop alternative products that do not threaten wildlife; and cooperative projects to find locally viable economic alternatives to commercial wildlife exploitation.

Prior to joining IFAW, Steuer spent seven years in Washington, DC, where she worked on domestic and international environmental issues and trade policy for the Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. >From 1995-1998, she served as legislative aide to Congressman George Miller, the senior Democrat on the Committee on Resources. She began her career in Washington in 1991 as Deputy Staff Director for the Fisheries and Natural Resources Subcommittee in the House of Representatives. During her years as a Congressional staffer, Karen was been responsible for legislative action on a variety of domestic and international environmental and wildlife protection issues, including the 1992 International Dolphin Conservation Act, the 1994 reauthorization of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the African Elephant and Rhino-Tiger Conservation Acts. Following the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement, she coordinated efforts to reform international trade policy to include environmental concerns and worker rights provisions. Karen has been a member of U.S. delegations to the International Whaling Commission, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. But her most stunning achievement is that she's married to Phil Clapham, whose bio elsewhere in this program is far less accurate but far more amusing.

ABSTRACT

"THE IWC AND CITES: Have We Won the Battle and Lost the War?" For almost 40 years, the NGOs of the "Save the Whale" movement have made great strides in whale conservation and protection. Many of our most notable achievements, from the designation of two international whale sanctuaries to the global moratorium on commercial whaling, have come through our ability to work effectively within the International Whaling Commission. But in recent years, the pro-whaling nations have managed to create an effective voting bloc in the IWC. At the same time, they have joined with the global "commercial consumptive use" movement and other nations in an effort to move the whaling debate from the IWC to the much larger, much more diverse Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Can they succeed? How does the NGO community have to adapt its tactics for that fight? Or can we?