Why does illegal wildlife trade persist in spite of legal alternatives in transboundary regions?

ABSTRACT

Both the characteristics of the value chains and the social-ecological context within which they exist are important to uncover motivations for engagement in legal and illegal value chains. Bêche-de-mer (dried sea cucumbers), shark fins, and fish maw (dried swim bladders) are valued products in the South Fly region of Papua New Guinea (PNG). We applied value chain analysis (VCA) to map the ‘vertical’ characteristics of trade and ‘horizontal’ contextual issues driving the trade. Vertical VCA showed that both legal and illegal value chains end in the same Asian cities, but using different routes. Prices offered by illegal middlemen to PNG fishers were significantly lower than those offered by legal buyers. Horizontal analysis showed five drivers (lack of information, obligatory dependencies to middlemen, kinship ties, need for cash, inaccessibility of legal markets) for accepting lower prices. We recommend interventions necessary to tackle these systemic drivers of illegal trade.

KEYWORDS:

• Bêche-de-mer
• borderlands
• fish maw
• illegal wildlife trade
• livelihoods
• shark fin
• transboundary
• value chain analysis

Acknowledgments

The authors thank staff of the local NGO Bata CDF in Daru for their assistance in the field; without their assistance we would not be able to conduct this study. The lead author thanks the people and local authorities of the villages in the South Fly for allowing her to work and live in their communities. The authors also thank the people and District, Provincial, and Government officials in the South Fly and Port Moresby (PNG) and in Merauke, Surabaya, and Jakarta (Indonesia) who gave their time to participate in the research and provided support to the study. The authors thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) under Small Research and Development Activity (SRA) FIS/2016/052 and funding from the Papua New Guinea National Fisheries Authority.