Risks and Fallacies Associated with Promoting a Legalised Trade in Ivory

ABSTRACT

African elephants are being poached at a rate that threatens their minimum viable population. Some economists have argued that flooding the market with a legal supply of ivory will drive prices downward, eroding the incentive for poaching. They suggest that the current international ban on trading ivory is to blame for creating an artificially high price. This paper interrogates these arguments, suggesting that they are inadequate and entail implausible assumptions. The dynamics of supply and demand probably work differently to how pro-trade economists typically argue they work. The paper concludes that the major risk entailed in creating a legal market for ivory is that it may well fail to reduce the price of ivory. Any attempts to legalise the trade therefore risk undermining the efficacy of demand reduction campaigns, in addition to sending confusing signals to the market as to whether trade will again become legitimate.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCiD

Ross Harvey http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2385-5530

Notes

1. This argument is frankly absurd. Supply, even through legal trade, would never be able to satiate demand – elephants cannot be reproduced or farmed like other wildlife. The argument assumes that legal supply would crowd out illegal supply overnight, but no evidence is offered as to how this might work. Moreover, demand reduction campaigns would have no credibility if supply was legitimate. Why should consumers refrain from purchasing ivory if supply is legally available? It would be like making cocaine legally available over the counter and then trying to convince consumers not to buy it (although analogies with the drug trade are also highly flawed).

2. One reviewer has questioned whether the idea would not be to harvest at a level that does not negatively affect tourism. But the argument being made here is that the existence of a legal market would not be able to supply consumer demand without threatening the collapse of the species because elephants simply do not breed fast enough, especially if afflicted by trauma.

3. Ring-fencing of particular revenues invariably creates extensive political economy problems for governing authorities. Firstly, there are difficulties around deciding which mechanism is most efficient for distributing these funds to avoid corruption. Secondly, deciding exactly which entities are to benefit, and what proportion of funds each one is to receive, is an almost impossible exercise.