With high ivory prices, enforcement alone won’t stop poaching

Kenyans are largely agreed that there is good reason to conserve elephants and rhinos.

There is also no argument about the means for achieving success.  It seems dedicated advocates for conservation consider that more forceful enforcement of existing laws will work.

These legal requirements aim to improve surveillance of animals in reserves, arm the rangers, raise fines and imprisonment terms for individuals trading animal trophies, and strengthen the moral message about the real risk of extinction of species.

I have doubts that the policy developed two decades ago is still applicable. The current crisis is an opportunity to examine why this is so and boldly seek new policy tools.

Expressing doubt in the effectiveness of these policy tools in reducing elephant and rhino poaching is not to say that the problem is not real. In the main, the argument here is that the existing policy toolbox is deficient. Merely working harder with the wrong tools will not attain the desired policy goals.

READ: KWS declares all-out war against poachers

To start with, it is not a coincidence that illegal killing of rhinos and elephants in Kenya have increased substantially with elevated prices of ivory. Reported prices show that rhino horn prices now exceed their equivalent weight in gold. At that price level, there is a strong and sustained incentive for someone to meet that demand, with the result that more incidents of poaching occur.

Bearing that in mind, it is not sensible to assume that those charged with preventing poaching have recently become more corrupt than they have hitherto been, but that the price signal has become much stronger and the temptation to make more profit may have tilted them away from conservation.

DRIVING UP PRICE

Against such large incentives for the illegal extraction of ivory and rhino horn, the policy option that would work for conservation must seek to depress that price. Admittedly, it is not easy to do that through the mechanisms most supported by many governments. What Kenya’s conservation policy has emphasized is the need to reduce the quantity of ivory available in the illegal markets. This position is ethically supported, but it hardly has an effect on strong demand.  Constraining supply merely drives up the price and makes illegal markets for ivory form and thrive.

The supply and demand for ivory and rhino horn apart, there’s no doubt that the poachers who kill animals in Kenya’s parks are well resourced with arms and communications equipment. They have shown the ability to quickly stalk, kill and dehorn rhinos and elephants with professional ease. They form part of a value chain that includes suppliers of various parts and those who are able to transport and export the ivory without detection.

That pipeline of delivery shows that there are serious gaps in the national security and conservation infrastructure that allow this flow to happen without detection. In short, the prevalence of poaching and illegal hunting of animals is a reflection of systemic weaknesses in domestic security. Better intelligence work to ensure disruption of economic crimes is required, as opposed to the militarization of conservation policy.

In addition to the fact that the profitability of the trade in ivory may have risen, the elevated prices could also be a signal that the demand side has grown. Analyses of the demand structure show that the demand is also driven by rising incomes and availability in illegal markets. Kenyan law would be limited in affecting these markets directly and the pursuit of cross-border cooperation between governments is the best option. Making progress here requires delicate diplomacy that may be compromised where Kenyans freely make xenophobic statements about far eastern countries generally, and Chinese traders in particular. 

Being confronted by pictures showing the savage slaughter of rhinos and elephants is enough to make many Kenyans enraged. That unequivocal support for conservation should be harnessed towards opening up the policy options and to recognize that the moral messaging that may have worked two decades ago is ineffective today.

In other words, the policy response must involve the options that reduce demand and affect prices so that poachers perceive greater risk in arrests relative to income to be gained. Those options then need to be discussed among all countries with threatened elephant and rhino populations.

As the evidence from other banned substances shows, moral claims and militarization of conservation will not be enough. Most importantly, conservation of elephant and rhino populations requires policy trade offs because not all conservation goals are complementary to each other.

Twitter: @IEAKwame