CHAPTER 6:

The Worldwide Ivory Ban: Consequences and Considerations

The three largest land mammals in the world - the African elephant, the white rhinoceros, and the black rhinoceros - are concentrated on the African continent, and some of the largest remaining populations of these animals live in Kenya and Tanzania. Elephants and rhinos have long been considered symbolic of the wildness and majesty of the vast African savannas by "Northern" conservationists. During the postcolonial era of indigenous African leadership, elephant and rhino populations have been decimated by intensive poaching efforts; East African black rhino are on the verge of extinction and elephants are not far behind... In Kenya, the [elephant] population has dropped from 130,000 in 1973 to 16,000 in 1989... Black rhino populations have taken an even more dramatic plunge... from 20,000 in 1970 to approximately 400 today" (Braude, 1992: 1). In 1989, led by the efforts of Richard Leakey - director of the Kenya Wildlife Services and Kenyan National Parks - and supported by a call to immediate action from conservationists from around the world (but based primarily in "Northern" countries), a worldwide ivory ban was instituted in attempts to halt the lucrative ivory trade responsible for the poaching intensity in East Africa.

Although the worldwide ivory ban seems to be a simple issue of elephant and rhinoceros protection, the ban has remained extremely controversial, because it reflects the power dynamics of "North/South" relationships of dependency that have been perpetuated throughout the colonial and postcolonial periods. A further deconstruction of the worldwide ivory ban illustrates these power dynamics in the East African context quite clearly, demonstrating that the seemingly clear-cut issue of elephant and rhino preservation, is actually much more complicated and is intimately connected with the continuing impoverishment of people and the degradation of the environment in East Africa.

The worldwide ivory ban was an international response to massive, indigenous poaching of elephants and rhinos between the 1970s and 1990s. Given the threat of extinction that African elephants and rhinos were increasingly facing with continuing poaching practiced by indigenous Africans, the worldwide ivory ban did provide an effective curbing of the slaughter of the animals by lowering international demand for ivory products and giving poachers less incentive to kill the animals (especially in Kenya, where a policy of "shoot to kill" was enforced to stifle poaching practices). As Braude (1992) acknowledges, the 1989 ban on ivory "had a major impact on poaching. It has lowered demand for ivory and has thus driven the price from a high of $300 per kilo in 1988 to $3 per kilo in 1990... while Leakey and Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) have raised the risk to poachers, [the ivory ban] has effectively lowered the payoff. As a result, only 55 elephants were poached in Kenya in 1990 as opposed to an average of 5,000 per year in the prior fifteen years" (Braude, 1992: 3).

However, although the worldwide ivory ban did succeed in forcibly lowering the incentives for indigenous Africans to poach, this was accomplished from a separationist, "hands-off" perspective that addressed the results rather than the causes of a much greater problem of indigenous, African poverty, desperation, and frustration in Kenya and Tanzania. Hecox (1996) makes this connection when he explains that "After Kenyan independence there was still tension between the local people and the government over who could use the wildlife. The government claimed ownership of the wildlife and prevented the local people from using it without permission. There was, however, still money to be made from wildlife... and the poaching problem was exacerbated" (2). The problems with poaching in Kenya are directly connected to the adoption of the colonial mentality by Kenya's postcolonial government, in regards to resource allocation to the majority of the East African people. The British system of isolating "wildlife" and natural resources based on a model of "man vs. nature" and based on a racist mistrust of indigenous African peoples, has been perpetuated in the postcolonial era by African government officials lacking faith in the management capacities of rural farmers and pastoralists, forcing rural Kenyans to rely on poaching activities to provide them with basic means of subsistence (and as a form of resistance of being denied local resources). The preservation of a colonial, capitalist model of socioeconomic organization in Kenya and in the context of international power dynamics is further evidenced by other aspects of the worldwide ivory ban. The Kenyan government's claims to ownership of natural resources and wildlife in the country were based on the justification that the whole of the nation would benefit from the ownership of natural resources and resulting ecotourist activities in the country. However, national profits and economic growth from ecotourism have rarely involved adequate distribution of resources to the rural people who must deal most directly with the negative impacts of those natural resources (drought, flooding, etc.) and wildlife (such as crop destruction from elephants moving through rural areas). Rural Africans are compelled - by the frustrating processes of governmental alienation - and are forced - by the destruction of their lifestyles because of the physical presence of the elephants - to resort to poaching to provide them with socioeconomic opportunities that have been denied by the national government's focus on national economic growth versus sustainable, local control of resources. Hecox (1996) recognizes that rural East Africans have resorted to poaching to relieve poverty caused by neo-colonialism at the national level, when he explains that, "the ivory ban and other such legislation of conservation through protection has led to a standoff between the national government of Kenya and the local people... Although tourism brings in a substantial amount of money each year, the majority of this money never makes it to the local villages. Rural farmers rarely, if ever, reap the benefits of tourism, yet they are the ones living side by side with the wildlife. This creates a tremendous conflict of interests" (3). The perpetuation of a capitalist ethic of economic growth benefits the national governments of East Africa at the expense of social sustainability for the majority of the rural farmers who are increasingly alienated and impoverished by this capitalist drive. Increasing poaching activities in the 1970s through 1990s, and the resulting worldwide ivory ban, reflect deep levels of human impoverishment that have remained unresolved in East Africa since the colonial period and have worsened as capitalist processes on the national scale focusing on the economic growth model have been embraced more fully by East Africa's governing officials.

The worldwide ivory ban also evidences the perpetuation of dependency relationships between the "North" and Kenya and Tanzania on an international scale. Although the ivory ban created a strong disincentive for poachers to continue killing elephants and rhinos, the ban did not address the deeper issues of why poaching had been such an attractive option in the first place: the ivory trade was lucrative for the poachers because "Northern" consumers in the U.S., Europe, and in Asia (particularly in Hong Kong) were willing to pay for the product in the form of jewelry, artwork, piano keys, etc. The ivory trade reflected global dynamics of capitalist dependency, in which rural Africans degraded their environment out of impoverished desperation, to produce an expensive commodity for "Northern" markets. Implicit within this relationship was the historical evidence of the ivory trade organized and perpetuated according to colonial models of resource extraction and exploitation; ivory was a lucrative commodity that was important for European technological financing and socioeconomic domination in the colonial period. Rodney (1981) recognizes this dynamic when he suggests that

"the most decisive limitation of ivory trade was the fact that it did not grow from local needs and local production. Large quantities of ivory were not required by any society inside Africa , and no African society turned to elephant hunting and ivory collection on a big scale until the demand came from Europe or Asia. Any African society which took ivory exports seriously then had to restructure its economy so as to make ivory trade successful. That in turn led to excessive and undesirable dependence on the overseas market and an external economy... The few socially desirable by-products of elephant hunting within Africa were chicken feed in comparison with the profits, technology, and skills associated with the product in Europe" (112-113).

Rodney's (1981) observations make it clear that the slaughter of elephants and rhinos for their ivory and horn cannot simply be attributed to African poachers, because the ivory trade has existed within a historical context of continuing power dynamics between the "North" and "South" reinforcing a dependency relationship between the two that has been perpetuated throughout the modern era.

An additional aspect of the worldwide ivory ban reinforces these connections between the ivory ban and East African dependency, degradation, impoverishment, and the perpetuation of an exploitative capitalist system reinforced on national and international levels. The national government's embrace of a capitalist model of economic growth and expansion, even when it is contrary to the "human interest" of the majority, is clearly revealed by the "shoot to kill" policies implemented by the Kenya Wildlife Services against poachers: the preservation of elephants and rhinos is not only an important "ecological" concern for East Africa but is of prime importance for East African ecotourism. The large mammals are an important GNP earner for the Kenyan and Tanzanian nations insofar as they attract white tourists to invest foreign capital into the East African economies. The willingness of the government to embrace a "shoot to kill" policy in regards to poachers, clearly illustrates the ways in which the "human interest" of the poachers (alienated from resources and policy decisions directly affecting their lives) has been disregarded in favor of the preservation of the economic viability of elephants and rhinos for the national government. Although the worldwide ivory ban has helped to preserve remaining elephant and rhino populations in East Africa, the ban cannot be considered separately from the socioeconomic context of capitalist, power dynamics that continue to reinforce dependency relationships and human impoverishment in the East Africa Region.

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