I’ve been MIA of late on the blog, mostly a function of end-of-term obligations. I’ve led a year-long graduate course on global wildlife conservation (course blog here). If you haven’t followed the news of late, iconic wildlife species like rhinos and elephants are threatened with extinction, mostly because rising incomes in China and Vietnam in particular are allowing more people to satisfy their desires for wildlife products.
Since the late 2000s, there has been a surge in demand for wildlife products. For example, poaching of rhinos, most of which survive in South Africa, have increased from negligible levels in 2007 to in excess of 1000 animals slaughtered per year. Much of the demand comes from Vietnam where ground rhino horn is erroneously thought to be a cure for a cancer, a hangover cure, and other maladies.
We recently presented our findings in Washington, DC before different audiences, and in the coming posts, I’ll be highlighting the key findings from six different areas – consumer demand, security, multilateral approaches, sport hunting, ecotourism, and public-private partnerships. I invite you to watch a video of our findings below or to review a powerpoint of the key issues here.
The planet is set to experience an extraordinarily tragic loss of species. This is inherently a political problem – weak range states in Africa, strong states in Asia with populations that lack an ethos of care for wildlife, and Western states with vibrant conservation communities but where other issues take center stage. I encourage bright minds in the Duck audience to bring their talents to bear on this issue. Can incentives be aligned? Can global, bilateral, and minilateral processes change outcomes in range and demand states? Can publics in Asia be persuaded to change their behavior? Time is running out.
I can’t help but see the framing of this problem as neo-imperialist, although I know that will sound unduly harsh and I don’t intend to be offensive. The “problem” as laid out here is to impose a Western aesthetic preference (i.e. mega-fauna preservation) on two different groups of states/societies outside of the West so that their ethos comes to match the (historically recently developed) preferences of a subset of Westerners and so that their states are used to enforce this Western preference through a range of incentives and norms. I think the real problem is how to frame environmental issues in ways that do not impose the values of a subset of Westerners.
Vikash, thanks for your comment. There is a difference between highlighting the problem and identifying the appropriate messaging and other strategies to address it. I agree, I place higher value on the survival of iconic wildlife than people in China and Vietnam. But, rather than accept the fact that they can use their purchasing power to cause these species to go extinct, I’m willing to use both persuasive messages and coercive instruments to try to change the facts on the ground. Now, part of that could be devising culturally appropriate messages to appeal to people in the region to change their behavior. Just because the top 1% of elites in Vietnam want to grind rhino horn for hangovers or as an aphrodesiac doesn’t mean that people in the West have to accept it. Given the readership, most of Duck readers are probably in the West, but the messages that resonate in China and Vietnam may be different.
Josh, I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt, but your project, as you have articulated it here, is completely and unabashedly imperialist. A concern for resonant messaging in Asia is only an attempt to veil the core nature of the project. While many individuals and groups in Asia and Africa do share a concern for their fauna and flora, I don’t think your posture — which seeks to persuade, incentivize, and even use coercive instruments to achieve adherence to your/Western aesthetic preferences — would be ethically defensible or acceptable to most people in the formerly colonized world (and probably in parts of the West) despite your genuine and well intentioned concern for protecting iconic species in far away places. This desire to pry open and re-shape the cultures and preferences of people in Asia and Africa (by force if necessary) by people in the West should give us pause and spur reflection.
I believe that environmentalists (and all other “-ists”) in the West need to step away from this habit of finding a pet project in Africa or Asia and then marshaling their considerable financial, intellectual, diplomatic, and coercive resources to achieve their goals directly or through proxy organizations. How many resources will be spent to achieve the imposition of this preference as opposed to working to help implement prioritized goals for which the majority of citizens in a given society would genuinely welcome foreign assistance?
I’m sorry Vikash but labeling something neo-imperialist is easy but off target here. African countries rely greatly on ecotourism as a large source of their GDP. They don’t want their wildlife killed by or for foreigners. So, on some level, Chinese and Vietnamese expropriation of Africa’s wildlife is “neo-imperialist” if we are forced to label it and Western efforts to help them are supportive of local aims. I don’t see how opposing the elite strata of China and Vietnam to turn elephants into chopsticks and rhino into erectile dysfunction treatment is neo-imperialist. Also, you are not giving the animals a vote here, as if anything democratically selected by human beings in a particular polity is okay since humans are the center of the universe. Some humans have to stand up for the animals, otherwise they will be gone.
Okay, your argument has shifted a bit. It is not problematic to argue in support of states in Africa defending their own sovereign status and protection of their sources of revenue; it was problematic to argue that the West does not have to “accept” the cultural practices of Asian countries to which it objects even when those practices have no bearing on life within Western societies. So I am more open to this restatement of your argument.
You should concede though that the desire for iconic animal products is not just confined to the elite of China or Vietnam — although they may have the purchasing power to create an issue in some African countries. For example, the illegal sale of rhino urine was recently a major scandal at two major zoos in India — the urine was sold for about $4 (Rs 250) per litre. The reason for the broad demand for these products has to do with the persistence of medieval alchemy in certain cultures and their forms of science. In the past, this demand has even been harnessed to fund the upkeep of a zoo in India. It may be uncomfortable to admit, but your argument is about a distaste for a wide set of cultural practices in many parts of the world, although only wealthy elites in East Asia are currently causing the specific problem for the rhino.
As to your argument about ethical extension and giving animals a vote, I am again troubled by this. The essence of imperialist thinking is the desire to speak for others (usually subaltern minorities and women) in “benighted” parts of Asia and Africa. I am sure your motivation to protect iconic animals is noble, but I wonder about the reflex that self-empowers your voice. I think any intellectual from or familiar with the formerly colonized parts of the globe finds this impulse troubling because they realize that the object being defended by the chivalrous Westerner is often just a pawn in a structurally pre-determined power struggle between Western and “traditionalist” local elites.
In any case, your argument is open to a slippery slope. It would be great if we gave rhinos a vote, but why not give all animals a vote? And how would cows and pigs vote in America about their fate? Should they be eaten and harvested merely because they are not as iconic as the rhino?
Vikash,
These issues go well beyond being about defending Africa’s sovereignty when we start thinking about global public goods problems that have impacts around the world. I understand that there is a specific history of imperialism (with which the United States has a different footprint than Europeans) and there is a problematic history of US interventions in the Western Hemisphere and beyond. That said, obsessive deference to national and human preference at the expense of the environment or wildlife would mean acquiescing to irreversible and catastrophic damage to nature, the foundation for all life on this planet. It’s casual and easy to label someone who wants to arrest that trajectory as “neo-imperialist” but it is wrong.
let me quote from my own chapter in a forthcoming volume on US-China relations and world order coming out soon from Palgrave, edited by Ikenberry.
“As China’s people become richer, their consumption of fish, meat, paper, wood products,
and energy will rise still further. China’s search for and acquisition of natural resources will generate even larger negative externalities on habitats,
wildlife, resources, and human populations across the world. In this context, a powerful environmental benefactor will need to speak up for nature.
While the United States, with its own consumptive history and behavior, is
not the most legitimate interlocutor, it is difficult to imagine either Europe
or Japan, given their recent challenges, from performing such a role. China
may have discipline to rein in some of its worst antienvironmental tendencies, but the country’s growth trajectory is so rapid that left to itself it is
hard to believe China possessing sufficient wherewithal to look out for the
interests of others.”
The world needs champions for nature, even ones with complicated histories on the topic and others. I am aware that cause can get hijacked for other ends, but the stakes are high. That doesn’t mean blind indulgence in bashing Asia or China for consumptive patterns I disagree with. I admit that those practices are probably more widely shared than just the 1% but values can change. There are nascent environmental communities in those countries, and outsiders, if they are smart, can figure out how to tap in to and empower that sentiment, without triggering a local backlash. Use of more coercive instruments has its place periodically but runs a greater risk of engendering controversy, unless tied to market access in Western countries.