Last week began a string of legal one-off ivory sales in Africa
that rekindled an argument between save-the-elephants traditional
conservationists and their free-market counterparts.
The old-school conservationists are alarmed and outraged by the
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species’ (CITES)
decision to allow four African nations to sell government
stockpiles of ivory. The sale, they argue, will surely lead to an
increase in elephant poaching.
Free-market types are alarmed and outraged by the very idea of
CITES’ 1989 ban on the trade. The ban, they argue, prevents local
people from profiting from their natural resources, thus
extinguishing any incentives populations have to protect the
animal.
These are the same arguments that were made in 1999, during the
last round of legal ivory sales. Incidentally, poaching rates did
not rise.
The ivory ban ignores the fact that elephants are not only killed
for ivory. They are a menace to local communities — they trample
crops, compete with livestock for scarce resources and even hurt
people. To many people who have to share land with elephants,
they may be worth more dead than alive even without the ivory
incentive.
The ban does nothing to tackle this issue and actually works
against market-based solutions that would address all the
aforementioned concerns.
By allowing the elephant to be as profitable as it can be, which
would include the sale of ivory, and instilling local property
rights, nations can provide incentives for local people to
protect the elephant while also providing much needed resources
to poor communities.
This is not just a theory.
Only four countries are selling ivory this round because only
countries with stable and growing elephant populations are
eligible. A brief look at the nations — Namibia, Zimbabwe,
Botswana and South Africa — shows that a property rights method
of conservation is the most effective.
Namibia’s system is centered on community-based natural resource
management, which allows local communities to own and benefit
from wildlife. According to USAID, these local conservatories
earned $2.35 million in 2004.
Actual sources of income vary greatly between conservatories but
include tourism, thatching grass sales, trophy hunting and live
game sales. If these communities were also allowed to benefit
from the sale in ivory, then the $1.1 million that the Namibian
government just received would be going directly to local
communities.
A similar program in Zimbabwe is called the Communal Areas
Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE). Not all
CAMPFIRE districts are privately owned. Some are owned communally
and others by the state. Often though, regardless of official
ownership, communities have direct access to wildlife revenues.
In this way, the government remains somewhat involved while still
devolving the responsibility and benefits of wildlife
conservation to local communities.
In Botswana another form of community-based natural resource
management has been used for over a decade. National Parks are
generally surrounded by Wildlife Management Areas, where local
communities are allowed to use the animals profitably and
practice subsistence hunting.
Wildlife Management Areas allow people to personally benefit from
wildlife conservation which garners support for the parks. They
also constitute a buffer zone between state-protected areas and
local communities that may see the animal populations as
hazardous.
The South Africa National Parks (SANPark) system has been largely
successful in protecting elephants. It has, however, been heavily
criticized. The parks are heavily subsidized, whereas their
private counterparts in South Africa are generally profitable.
Furthermore, land rights and the current use of commercial
benefits have been disputed by local people.
SANPark has recognized these issues and is currently embracing a
Transformation Mission that would “transfer power and control of
resources from the minority that has been appointed and
privileged by an undemocratic system to the majority that
participates in the new democratic process.”
While South Africa does show an example of how a state that is
able to subsidize conservation can protect elephant populations,
they have come to recognize the relative benefits of community
ownership and are working to turn a subsidized government project
into community projects that can benefit local development.
The countries with thriving elephant populations do not follow
one formula for success. Two of the four even have national
parks. They do, however, all recognize the need for transference
of both the responsibility and the benefits of conservation to
local people, which is accomplished through some form of property
rights.
If the aim is really to save elephants and empower communities,
ideology should take a back seat to methodologies that have been
proven successful. There is no need to take to the streets,
demanding a system based solely upon the free market. Likewise,
it is impractical to rely on government conservation efforts that
do not allow local people to benefit from elephant populations.
The ivory ban is an outdated, ideologically based institution
that has done just that.
