Statistics show the depletion of elephant populations is indeed serious
What you need to know:
- In many jurisdictions, the public and the legislature tend to defer to state agencies that are part of implementing or building policy.
- Their patronising position seems to merely telling the rest to hold it because they are in charge and understand the situation far better than everyone else.
- The legislature ought to be more critical of the positions taken by state agencies that have an interest in justifying policy positions that go with additional claims on public resources.
It is monotonous repetition, I concede, to state that a good deal of policy discourse in Kenya happens without reckoning with the facts or with misinterpretation as to the meaning of data.
One recent instance occurred a couple of weeks ago. The event was a presentation before a parliamentary committee by a state department, seeking to dissuade legislators from declaring poaching a national disaster in Kenya.
Among many other proclamations, the state agencies and departments presenting the case contended that the elephant population in Kenya was not facing a threat level that justified the extreme measure of declaring poaching a national disaster.
In many jurisdictions, the public and the legislature tend to defer to state agencies that are part of implementing or building policy. This is important, because state agencies are expected to come into a policy review process with clean hands, and with the urge to support their proposals with full disclosure of the information that is relied upon.
In Kenya’s case, one must reconsider this principle with regard to conservation policy, because the case made before Parliament was not presented with data to support that proposal.
The argument made before the Parliamentary Committee was that the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and the state department together did not support the view that Kenya’s elephant population was being depleted at the rate suggested by those support the declaration of a national disaster.
FULL DISCLOSURE
The premise is that that the declaration would signal panic and offer no additional strength to conservation policy in Kenya. It is possible that the Kenya Wildlife Service and the concerned Ministry understand the issue more deeply, and with better insight. They failed, however, to present either to the public or the legislative committee the data supporting their assertion.
Reviewing the latest edition of the Statistical Abstract (2013) shows that the argument used in asserting that depletion is not occurring is incorrect. The estimates of animal populations reveal that the elephant population in Kenya grew from just under 20,000 in 2008 and peaked at 22,500 in 2010 and 2011, before dropping sharply to 18,000 in the year 2012.
What this data shows is consistent with the narrative by conservationists that elephant populations in Kenya had stabilized and were growing at above-replacement rates but collapsed by about 20 per cent in a two-year period.
Even accounting for the drought that massively affected most of the wildlife, that number is still impressive. That rate of depletion would be evidence of a certain crisis unless an explanation about a one-time shock to the population were provided.
This state of affairs reflects two important factors that affect policy formulation in Kenya. The first is that while the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) on one side and the Ministry are confident that the level of elephant poaching does not yet endanger the entire population, they have not disclosed the full facts on the state of the population to justify their contention.
ADDITIONAL PUBLIC RESOURCES
Instead, their patronising position seems to merely tell the rest to hold it because they are in charge and understand the situation far better than everyone else. This is a classic case of the policy formulation by stealth and obfuscation. Parliament is being urged to support a position without full information at the disposal of state agencies being provided.
The second point is that the legislature in Kenya is increasingly confronted with demands to insert its influence in supporting symbolic gestures that hardly mean anything for the policy issue at hand.
Despite maintaining a position that directly contradicts the data available to the public, KWS and the Ministry are correct that declaring the falling elephant population a national disaster by itself does nothing to affect conservation. In essence, unless a new active policy measure is taken, signing on paper that this is a national disaster does not save any elephant or allow for the recovery of any ivory.
The legislature ought to be more critical of the positions taken by state agencies that have an interest in justifying policy positions that go with additional claims on public resources.
In addition, as Parliament adjusts to the new environment that requires receiving public representations, it must be wary of being asked to use parliamentary authority to make symbolic statements because symbolism is not policy.
Kwame Owino is the chief executive officer of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA-Kenya), a public policy think tank based in Nairobi. Twitter: @IEAKwame
