The EconomistAugust 10th 2019 International 492 est in their survival, but that is proving
hard to bring about. In a village just outside
Kafue, Gertrude Mwiba is one of those try-
ing to rub along with the local megafauna.
As a local organiser for a community-based
natural-resource-management forum, she
has been helping find ways to reduce
poaching by promoting other livelihoods.
Growing maize, soya beans and cassava,
the local staples, are options; beekeeping
deters elephants, which hate bees, as well
as providing an income. But poaching is
more profitable than any of them. Ele-
phants are far from the only targets. Va-
rious types of antelope, buffaloes and even
hippos are sought after as “bush-meat” in
the capital, Lusaka, and abroad.
Having big endangered beasts as neigh-
bours brings in some money. Safari lodges
dotted through the park attract tourists
with a few hundred dollars a night to
spend. But they do not create many jobs.
Locals would have nothing against trophy-
hunting—tourists paying to shoot ani-
mals—but believe they would see little of
the proceeds. Of the money the govern-
ment gets from safari operators, 20% is ear-
marked for local villages. But Ms Mwiba
says disbursement can take two years, if it
happens at all, and most is spent on anti-
poaching activities anyway. Around the
world, poor farmers like her are the front
line of defence for some endangered spe-
cies. Yet for them, wildlife protection
brings no obvious benefits, just costs.
Some conservationists believe that in
order for locals to be given an interest in
the survival of wildlife, a controlled market
in products must be allowed. Trade is a rel-
atively small danger to the world’s biodi-
versity. Far more important are loss of hab-
itat and climate change.
Others argue the opposite: that the trade
in some products, such as ivory and rhino
horn, has been a big factor in the threat to
those species. In countries that lack suffi-
ciently solid political institutions and law-
enforcement agencies, the argument goes,
trade will encourage short-term killing
rather than long-term investment, and the
existence of any legal market encourages
and enables the illegal one. It makes it easi-
er to launder illegal products and sustains
the demand that fuels the trade.
Vested interests on both sides distort
the argument—those sitting on valuable
stocks of ivory or rhino horn obviously
stand to profit from trade; and some con-
servationist ngos’ purpose and fund-
raising rely on a purist approach. But the
numbers tend to support the abolitionists.
After the ivory trade was banned in 1989,
elephants’ fortunes turned around. The
two camps squabble about whether that
was mainly the result of falling demand or
of better anti-poaching measures, as Afri-
can governments came under pressure to
do more to protect them. But a resurgence
of poaching in the past decade seems
linked to a partial liberalisation in 2007,
when a one-off sale of some existing ivory
stocks was permitted (see chart). Japan was
approved as an authorised importer as its
market seemed sufficiently well regulated.
The result, say the abolitionists, is that it
has become the centre of the illegal trade in
worked ivory. The biggest seizures of
smuggled artefacts these days are by Chi-
nese customs of goods entering the coun-
try from Japan.
The trend, within cites, is towards
stricter controls. At the previous cop, held
in Johannesburg in 2016, more species
were added to the appendices—all eight
species of pangolin, for example, are now
listed in Appendix I—and protection was
enhanced for the African grey parrot, lion,
cheetah, helmeted hornbill and totoaba (a
fish whose bladder is used in Chinese
medicine). cites congratulated itself that
wildlife was now “firmly embedded in the
agendas of global enforcement, develop-
ment and financing agencies”.
There has indeed been progress since
2016, notably in making it harder for crimi-
nals to trade wildlife products on global in-
ternet platforms. And the issue has gained
prominence, helped by a high-profile con-
ference in London in 2018. The firms that
unwittingly provide the infrastructure for
the trade are getting better at monitoring
it—haulage companies at checking cargo,
banks at spotting suspicious flows of mon-
ey. China has just taken over the chair of
the Financial Action Task Force, a plurilat-
eral body supposed to curb money-laun-
dering. The new chairman, Liu Xiangmin,
has listed going after the proceeds of wild-
life crime as an objective.
Some advances have also been made in
curbing demand for the illegal products.
What happens in China matters most. The
emergence of hundreds of millions of Chi-
nese with disposable incomes turned what
were once niche products into a huge mar-
ket. The Beijing metro has posters publicis-
ing the fight against wildlife crime. Yao
Ming, a retired basketball star, has lent hisname to campaigns to save elephants,
sharks and rhinos. And at the end of 2017
China put into force a ban on all domestic
trade in ivory. (Because of cites, trading
newly acquired ivory was already illegal.)
Technology is also helping. In some
parks in Zambia and elsewhere, rhinos and
elephants are fitted with sensors and mon-
itored by drones. dnatesting of seized ivo-
ry makes it possible to identify fairly pre-
cisely where the animal was killed.
However, only 20% of large seizures are
tested—“representing an important
missed opportunity to better understand
the criminal networks trafficking ivory”,
says Matthew Collis of the International
Fund for Animal Welfare, a charity.In the soup
But ahead of the Geneva meeting, the mood
among conservation ngos is not upbeat.
After all, about 5,800 animals and 30,000
species of plant are listed by cites, and still
more are likely to be added this year—such
as some new species of shark, killed for the
fins so prized in Chinese soups.
And efforts to eliminate the trade offer
an object lesson in the law of unintended
consequences. Often, when demand is
suppressed in one place, it pops up in an-
other—especially in China’s neighbours
such as Vietnam and Laos. China’s ban did
cut the price of ivory. But that prompted
some ivory poachers to turn to pangolins.
Rhino horn is another example. China
has banned its sale since 1993; and demand
for its use in traditional Chinese medicine
(for fevers, rheumatism and gout) has fall-
en. But it has picked up in Vietnam on non-
sensical rumours it can cure cancer. Tiger-
bone remedies are being replaced by lion-
and leopard-bone ones. And so on.
Moreover, although China is trying to
curb illegal trade, it is also promoting tcm
as one of its civilisation’s great contribu-
tions to the world. It has indeed made
breakthroughs, such as artemisinin, now a
widely used defence against malaria. Very
few of its cures come from animals and the
official pharmacopoeia has been purged of
illegal (and useless) treatments such as rhi-
no horn and tiger bone. But some tcmprac-
titioners still prescribe them, so conserva-
tionists are alarmed that in May the World
Health Organisation gave tcmrespectabil-
ity by including diagnoses for 400 condi-
tions in its influential International Classi-
fication of Disease list.
Efforts to cut demand for illegal pro-
ducts have had an impact, and attitudes are
changing. Sharks’-fin soup, for example, is
no longer a fixture at Chinese banquets,
and more and more diners know it is at best
a controversial taste. But as endangered
species dwindle further, the market for
many products is still robust. Trafficking in
them remains, in Mr Collis’s phrase, “a low-
risk, high-reward crime”. 7The price of ivory
Estimated elephant population in Africa*, ’000Source: “Continent-wide survey reveals
massive decline in African savannah
elephants”, by M. J. Chase et al., PeerJ 2016*Areas covered
by Great Elephant
Census1995 2000 05 1410500
400
300
200
100
0Partial liberalisation of
CITES ban on ivory trade