8.5 Equity and the elephant
During the 1980s the African elephant was
officially defined as an endangered species:
one estimate reported the elephant population
crashing from 1.3 million in 1979 to 609,000 in
1989, especially in East Africa. The primary
cause was the thriving international trade in
ivory, concentrated in Japan, which
encouraged widespread poaching. The plight
of the elephant became acause c ́el`ebrefor
environmental organisations such as WWF
and Western governments, including Britain,
France and the USA. In 1989 the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species
(CITES) banned the ivory trade by placing
elephants on its Appendix I list of sacrosanct
creatures. The ban had an immediate impact
on Western demand for ivory, slashing its price
and reducing poaching, and the elephant
population began to recover during the 1990s.
Several southern African states lobbied hard
for a partial relaxation of the ban because:
- Rather than being under threat, the elephant
population in their countries is too large.
Zimbabwe claimed that its elephant
population had grown from 30,000 to
70,000 in recent years, which is about
25,000 more than its scrubland can support,
causing the government to cull elephants
and build up a huge stockpile of ivory. - Is it right that Western governments, by
banning the ivory trade, should deny poor
African countries the opportunity to make
money from one of their few natural
resources? Nor is the ban costless;
elephant herds often trample precious crops
and damage property.
In 1997 CITES allowed a partial relaxation of
the ban on ivory trade so that Zimbabwe,
Botswana and Namibia agreed a one-off sale of
stockpiled ivory to Japan. Almost 50 tonnes
(5,446 tusks) was sold to Japan for some US$5
million in 1999. In 2002, CITES agreed a further
sale of existing ivory stocks by Botswana (20
tonnes), Namibia (10 tonnes) and South Africa
(30 tonnes). However, this sale had still not
taken place in January 2007 because of the
failure to establish robust baseline data on the
elephant population and on poaching levels.
The case for a ban (preservation)- Any trade in ivory legitimates it and makes it
difficult to regulate: it is hard to tell whether
ivory has been legally or illegally traded.
Poaching in Kenya increased when the
one-off sale took place in the late 1990s. - Many Westerners adopt the preservationist
position that it is simply wrong to kill any
elephant. - Elephants may be worth more to local
people alive as a tourist attraction. - As it is difficult to measure elephant
populations accurately, we cannot be sure
that they are flourishing.
Conclusion: The relaxation of the ban will
stimulate a massive increase in poaching and
an illegal ivory trade, sending the elephant
population back into decline.
The case for trade (sustainable utilisation)- The existence of large stockpiles of ivory
from elephants that died naturally or were
culled is a waste of a valuable resource. - A strictly regulated, limited trade in
stockpiled ivory will bring much-needed
revenue to impoverished indigenous
communities. In Zimbabwe, the Campfire
community-based programme permits local
communities to sell lucrative hunting
licences so that rich Western tourists shoot
elephants as trophies, with the revenues
being ploughed back into conservation
(although critics claim that most revenue
goes to the safari companies and very little
trickles down to local people). - Sustainable utilisation provides an incentive
for local communities to protect their
elephant population in return for a share of
the revenues.
Conclusion: The partial lifting of the ban
represents a shift from preservation to
sustainable development because (in theory)
the environment is protected whilst social
injustices are reduced.
See Barbier et al. ( 1990 ). CITES website:
http://www.cites.org/.