In the wake of the China-Africa ivory trade: more-than-human ethics across borders

ABSTRACT

Global responses to the hotly debated China-Africa ivory trade in the past decade offer an entry point to examine whether and how African elephants have come to matter in China ethically. This article highlights the complexity of more-than-human ethics across geographic spaces and politico-cultural boundaries. We focus on the pivotal roles of conservationists who are embedded in multispecies relations on a transnational scale and who actively cultivate distant care for elephants. Reflecting upon a conservation trip named ‘From Kenya to China’, we demonstrate a simultaneous process through which the conservationists, on the one hand, have grown to realise different cultural contexts and regimes of values, while continuing to promote conservation ideologies and build human-nonhuman connections on the other. We argue that relational ethics in the more-than-human worlds across borders is not just about how we treat other species, but ultimately about how we treat other humans and how we educate ‘others’ about treating nonhumans.

RÉSUMÉ

La réponse internationale au sujet controversé du trafic d’ivoire entre la Chine et l’Afrique au cours des dix dernières années offre un point de départ pour étudier si les éléphants africains sont devenus importants en Chine du point de vue éthique, et le cas échéant, de quelle manière. Cet article met en évidence la complexité de l’éthique au-delà de l’humanité à travers les espaces géographiques et les démarcations politico-culturelles. Nous nous concentrons sur les rôles primordiaux des écologistes qui sont intégrés dans les relations multiespèces à l’échelle transnationale et qui s’occupent activement des éléphants à distance. En faisant appel à un voyage écologique appelé « Du Kenya à la Chine », nous démontrons un processus simultané par lequel les écologistes ont, d’une part, évolué pour comprendre les contextes culturels et les régimes de valeurs divers, tout en continuant d’autre part de promouvoir les idéologies écologiques et d’enrichir les liens entre l’humanité et les espèces non humaines. Nous soutenons que l’éthique relationnelle dans les mondes non humains à travers les frontières ne concerne pas seulement la façon dont nous traitons les autres espèces, mais finalement celle dont nous traitons les autres hommes et dont nous apprenons aux « autres » à traiter les espèces non humaines.

RESUMEN

Las respuestas globales al candente debate sobre el comercio de marfil entre China y África en la última década ofrecen un punto de entrada para examinar si es que los elefantes africanos han llegado a tener importancia para China en términos éticos, y cómo esto ocurriría. Este artículo destaca la complejidad de la ética más que humana a través de espacios geográficos y límites político-culturales. Nos centramos en los roles fundamentales de los conservacionistas que están integrados en relaciones multiespecies a escala transnacional y quienes cultivan activamente cuidado a la distancia para los elefantes. Reflexionando sobre un viaje de conservación llamado ‘De Kenia a China’, demostramos un proceso simultáneo a través del cual los conservacionistas, por un lado, se han dado cuenta de diferentes contextos culturales y regímenes de valores, mientras que por otro lado, continúan promoviendo ideologías de conservación y construyendo conexiones no humanas. Argumentamos que la ética relacional en los mundos más allá de los humanos a través de las fronteras no se trata solo de cómo tratamos a otras especies, sino en última instancia, de cómo tratamos a otros humanos y cómo educamos a ‘otros’ sobre el tratamiento de los no humanos.

KEYWORDS:

• China-Africa
• elephant and ivory
• wildlife conservation
• human-nonhuman
• ethics
• global connection

MOTS-CLEFS:

• Chine-Afrique
• éléphants et ivoire
• préservation de la faune sauvage
• humain et au-delà de l’humanité
• éthique
• liens planétaires

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• China-África
• elefante y marfil
• conservación de vida salvaje
• humano - no humano
• ética
• conexión global

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our sincere thanks to those who supported Yufang Gao’s conservation tour as part of the research project through online crowdfunding from Indiegogo in 2014, and to Resson Kantai Duff and Christopher Kiarie for their participation throughout this project. We are especially grateful to Kate McClellan and Amanda D. Concha-Holmes who generously helped us refine earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

Co-author Gao Yufang's field research in East Africa and China during the summer of 2013 was funded by the Yale Tropical Resources Institute, the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University, and the Carpenter-Sperry Fund by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. The 2014 “From Kenya to China“ conservation tour was partly supported by online crowdfunding from Indiegogo, while Save the Elephants provided airfare support for Resson Kantai Duff and Christopher Kiarie to join this conservation tour. We have disclosed these information fully to Taylor & Francis, with the understanding that the abovementioned institutions and individuals have not affected our research reported in the enclosed paper, and vice versa.

Correction Statement

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

Notes

1. This was first written in Duff’s diary before her visit to China and was later quoted in her article published in Swara, a publication by the East African Wild Life Society that focuses on conservation and sustainable use of natural resources in East Africa.

2. Amongst a total of 22 elephant-related campaigns, mostly launched between 2013 and 2015, the majority targeted the demand side of the illegal ivory trade, while some oriented towards raising social awareness in general with no specific objectives, and campaigns directly focusing on anti-poaching or anti-trafficking have been rare (Gao, n.d.).

3. Besides ivory consumers with heterogeneous tastes dealing with a variety of ivory products (Gao, 2014; Gao & Clark, 2014), other groups such as ivory traders, courier companies, and even government officials, who affect the chains of the ivory trade and consumer behaviours, may have been overlooked by conservation campaigns.

4. In response to increased poaching activities in the 1970s and 1980s, CITES added the African elephant into Appendix I in 1989, which bans all international commercial trade of listed species and their derivatives. Arguing that the relatively abundant elephant populations in their countries were feasible for sustainable use, Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe in 1997 and South Africa in 2000, respectively, convinced CITES to down-list their relatively abundant elephant populations to Appendix II and to authorise regulated ivory trade (UNEP, CITES, IUCN, TRAFFIC, 2013).

5. The retreat of the elephant habitats in China from north to south resulted from factors identified by scholars as climate change, habitat destruction, human population increase and migration, farmer-elephant conflict, as well as hunting for elephant ivory, meat, hide, and bones (Elvin, 2004; Wen, 1995). Today, Asian elephant populations exist only in the far southwest of China with 230 to 280 individuals remaining (Liu, 2014), whose entanglements with local communities have been examined by Hathaway (2015).

6. By the 1970s, Japan, Europe, and North America were the primary consumers of ivory and ivory objects, which were often worked in and traded through Hong Kong, with some raw ivory directly obtained from African countries with which China had diplomatic relations (such as Tanzania).