Back to Appendix II?

    Is the solution to effectively protecting and managing the African elephant to allow it to be used sustainably just like any other renewable resource?  Is sustainable use even possible in the context of the history of problems the African elephant has faced?  It is in trying to answer these questions that the North-South debate truly emerges and the issue of green colonialism enters the picture.

    What is green colonialism?  Essentially it can be understood as having two somewhat contradictory components.  The first is attempts by Northern countries to retain and even expand their access to the resources of the South by turning the environments of the latter into a sort of common property with cheap or free access for all (Hutton).  The second component stems from the international environmental NGOs who insist that the South must not take the same path to development as the North.  The former must develop sustainably and protect and conserve its resources, biodiversity, etc. (Hutton).

    In this context there is a heated and at times vicious debate over whether the ban on trade in elephant products should be rescinded.  There are two main actors: the international environmental NGOs primarily in the form of the animal rights movement, and the African range states particularly the three lobbying for the downlisting of their elephant populations to Appendix II, Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe.

    As mentioned previously both CAMPFIRE and culling programs cannot achieve their full potential because the people and governments cannot sell many of the products that can be derived from elephants.  The stockpiles of ivory that many of the range states keep in storage are quite valuable:

Thirty-three African countries possess a total of 462 tons of ivory … Its value is hard to assess since prices are set on the black market.  And inferring value simply from the size of ivory stocks can be deceiving, since in many countries tusks have deteriorated during their years of storage in humid tropical conditions.  A conservative estimate of $100 per kilogram of ivory (pre-ban prices ranged from $150 to $300 per kilogram) might place the value of those stocks at $46 million … this is ivory that has already been taken, and it's worth asking why, in a region where people are struggling to survive, it should go to waste (Sugal 1997, 25).

In Zimbabwe, half of the ivory stockpile of 33 tons belongs to the impoverished rural communities.  The money the ivory could earn would benefit the people enormously (Hutton).  It is not only ivory that would generate much needed income but also trade in elephant hides: "in 1988 Zimbabwe earned US$1.77 million from hide exports, compared with just over US$2 million for ivory.  With hide now being produced only as a by-product of problem animals control and sport hunting, output is way down, yet even so, at pre-ban prices CAMPFIRE communities lost the right in 1992 to earn an estimated US$93,000" (Hutton).  It must be noted that by 1988 much of the ivory trade was illegal and so amounts earned from ivory were likely to be much higher than $2 million but would not necessarily appear on government records.  Nonetheless, this does not diminish the amount of revenue forfeited due to the ban on elephant hides.

    Spearheading the opposition is the "Species Survival Network, a consortium of over 30 NGOs - predominantly from the West, and including all the leading animal rights groups active internationally" (Ward and Tavengwa).  The Network is led by the American-based Humane Society as well as two British organizations: IFAW and the Environmental Investigation Agency.  There are three main thrusts to their opposition: "That sustainable use initiatives which involve consumptive use of wildlife - such as CAMPFIRE - are fine in theory but doomed to fail in practice; that even if some elephant range states can control ivory production, resuming trade will cause a resurgence of poaching in others; and that ivory trade cannot be controlled in end markets, again leading to poaching in range states" (Ward and Tavengwa).  The animal rights groups feel that trophy hunting is incompatible with game-viewing tourism as the former teaches animals to stay away from people, decreasing the probability that visitors will see a lot of wildlife up close and thus the overall quality of southern Africa as a tourist destination (Barrit 1996).  The animal rights movement also believes that it was only the CITES trade ban that saved the East African elephant population and it does not accept that sustainable use is an effective method of managing wildlife populations. 

The Namibian government enshrined the concept of 'sustainable utilisation' in the Constitution and [Cape Fur] sealers take advantage of this to conduct a trade in seal penises for aphrodisiacs.  When a natural disaster wiped out hundreds of thousands of seals in 1994, government scientists said there should be no 'harvest' for several years.  Yet, faced with demands from sealers, the government permitted tens of thousands of seals to be killed, with potentially dire consequences for the long-term viability of the population (Barrit 1996).

Lastly, and in this instance perhaps least, is the actual argument for animal rights: humans should not kill elephants because there is value simply in their existence and slaughtering them "diminishes us as people" (Barrit 1996).

    What seems to be missing from their position is any attempt to reduce the demand for ivory.  By focusing solely on the desire of some African countries to be allowed to legally sell elephant products, the animal rights movement is missing half the picture.  This half happens to be largely the responsibility of the industrialized world. 

    The African countries have their own counter-arguments.  While hunting may make the animals more timid, trophy hunting earns far more than other forms of tourism: "In Tanzania it has been calculated that one hunter is worth 100 ecotourists" (Hylton 1996).  The do-nothing preservation approach of the animal rights movement has its downfalls as well:

They cite a case in the late 1960s, when elephant populations in and around Kenya's Tsavo National Park had reached about 40,000 - a number that virtually every scientist who looked at the problem agreed could not be supported by the ecosystem.  Conservationists and wildlife experts argued that 3,000 elephants needed to be culled … to stabilize the population.  Preservationists replied that nature should be allowed to take its course.  In an outcome that was to characterize the debate that has continued since, the preservationists prevailed.  The area was subsequently hit by severe drought, and at least 9,000 elephants died of starvation.  Several hundred rhino died as well - victims of a rampage in which the desperate elephants destroyed not only their own vegetation but the rhinos' (Sugal 1997, 20).

    The Southern countries also feel that animal rights end up playing a very minor role in the debate.  "Fully aware that support for its own philosophy is still marginal even in the West, the animal rights lobby will avoid being drawn on the ethical aspect of wildlife consumption and instead borrow heavily from mainstream 'conservation speak' to project ivory trade as being unsustainable" (Ward and Tavengwa).  Indeed the management proposals of the animal rights movement, particularly the sterilization option, are dubious in their ethics themselves.  Is it right for humans to prevent animals in the wild from breeding? (Hylton 1996).  From the South's standpoint, the controversy over elephants has more to do with their usefulness as a charismatic megavertebrate for fundraising purposes than their welfare as fellow inhabitants of the Earth (Hutton).

    As for the argument that renewed trade will lead to a proliferation in poaching, the African nations want to be given the opportunity to try and manage the industry.  They feel they have developed methods for identifying ivory that will make its trade as secure as that of gold and bank notes (Hutton).  The argument of the animal rights NGOs that the ivory trade cannot be controlled in end markets leading to increased poaching in Africa has been circumvented to some extent by proposing to only allow trade with Japan (Ward and Tavengwa).  This would make monitoring and controlling the trade much easier.

    Those who live with a resource are likely to understand it best and so should be permitted to manage it (Murphree).  It is here that the African countries become most frustrated as they are not given credit and respect for the tools they design (Murphree; How CITES Impacts on Communities).  It is here, too, that we turn to a related frustration, the political and unequal nature of CITES.