In the last few weeks The Economist has started up a new technology blog called Babbage. I've been posting a few items on this. I suspect that it is an attempt by my employer to mop up every last creative word that I have inside of me, and the attempt seems to be working. Since Babbage launched I've not posted a thing.
Things have been busy. The section head is away, I've been writing and editing at times. In no particular order, and not necessarily comprehensively. I had a lot of good feedback over these two pieces in particular.
Leader - Ban the trade in tuna but set a path to sustainable exploitation, March 18th, 2010.
A ban on the trade of bluefin is rejected, March 18th, 2010.
Oh, one other piece of information. Apparently I upset the elephant people so much at CITES, with my daring questions about where the evidence is to show that ivory sales increase poaching, that I became known as "the Dragon lady from The Economist". I really like that. Thanks to Iain Douglas Hamilton for letting me know. I'm thinking of getting a tattoo or something.
(* Update -4.5.10-: One of the authors of a recent Science paper, on the ivory trade, which includes Iain Douglas Hamilton, writes to tell me that this paragraph may imply to some readers that one of the authors of this paper dubbed me "The Dragon Lady". Such a suggestion was absolutely not my intention and I have no evidence, nor reason to believe, this is the case at all.)
To everyone working on ivory and elephants, please direct your time and attention to producing some good evidence that links one-off sales with increases in poaching. It is far more productive than hurling abuse, and it will give me something to write about when it arrives.
Recent articles
The fly - in a flap about Drosophila, April 29th, 2010
Whales - the fiant compromise (jointly authored with Ken Cukier in Tokyo), April 29th, 2010.
Cosmic archeology - new ways to hunt for extraterrestrials, April 15th, 2010. (One letter writer accuses me of ignoring UFOs as evidence for aliens.)
Endangered species
Leader - Ban the trade in tuna but set a path to sustainable exploitation, March 18th, 2010.
A ban on the trade of bluefin is rejected, March 18th, 2010.
Aftermath of CITES - How the elephant hurt the bluefin, March 25th, 2010
Green.view, While stocks last, March 16th, 2010.
And various Babbage posts, GPS, Building Design, Electronic voting,
Re: Elephants, CITES and Trade, Why does the burden of proof lie with the 'anti-trade' side? I ask that the pro-trade side provide solid evidence that international sales will do no harm, for example to demonstrate convincingly that legal ivory sales will put poachers out of business.
ReplyDeleteHi Natasha. You've hit on an interesting point, or at least half of it. There is not yet any concrete analysis to show definitively that one-off sales increase ivory poaching, but there is also no proof to show that one-off sales DO NOT increase ivory poaching. From my understanding, much of the opposition to the requests by Tanzania and Zambia to sell their ivory stocks were based on the feeling that more time is needed to more thoroughly investigate the matter, and that with ivory poaching sky-rocketing, now is not the time to undertake what could be a very destructive (or not, again, no really good evidence either way) experiment for elephant populations that are already hard-hit.
ReplyDeleteI'll offer some short answers to the questions raised in both these interesting comments. And just to say I'm not trying to defend all of these positions I'm just telling it as I think it is:
ReplyDelete1. basic economics suggest that an increase in the supply would reduce the price and therefore the incentive to poach. There is much evidence and support for this idea, although it will be linked with the elasticity of demand.
2. the proposal of some who oppose one-off sales is that the reverse happens. So one needs to start out with a reverse mechanism that is at least as plausible. The best idea I know of is that it leads to laundering of illegal ivory. The problem with this idea is that we don't know if this is of any significant scale at all, and the full mechanism by which this would work is not clear (at least to me). Evidence for this proposal is lacking
3. There has been one study so far of the links between the one-off sales and ivory trade and this found no effect. Now it is only one paper, and may be wrong, but this is quite reasonably a starting point for the discussion. As I understand it, it was also prompted (if not funded) by the concerns of an animal welfare group.
Bulte, E.H., R. Damania, G.C. van Kooten, 2005. Do one off ivory sales encourage illegal harvests of elephants? Journal of Wildlife Management 69: 14-19
4. even if there is evidence and a mechanism that links one-off sales with poaching it is still necessary to demonstrate that this is a significant factor in poaching. For example, it has been suggested in a recent article in New Scientist that the effects of unregulated African ivory markets are far more significant to the poaching that goes on that one-off sales, which sort-of makes sense. In other words, even if the one-off sales do trigger some poaching they need to be shown to be biologically relevant.
5. And finally, I guess because of the potential benefits that sales of ivory can bring to the countries that must act as stewards to the world's elephants we must be careful not to eliminate something that could actually be bringing benefits to the species even though our delicate western sensibilities flinch at the idea of killing such a beautiful creature. Our priorities are not those of everyone else.
When poachers are caught killing elephant for their tusk, and rinos from their horn, they are shot on sight by the game rangers. It has not slowed down the trade. Just as drugs continue to sell, one need to not only eliminate the messengers, but also the listeners. Understand?
ReplyDeleteYour comment has been saved and will be visible after blog owner approval. Liberals, greeny, earth warming-freaks are good at that.
ReplyDelete