Environmental Destruction in History–It Bodes Poorly for the Elephants
A sample blog post by Elisabeth Perlman.
Image credit: Wellcome Library, London
The recent news about the mass slaughter of elephants has prompted me to think about environmental protection choices over time. It is interesting to think about what the good in question actually is, when one reads an article like this one. The majority of people who care about the protection of African Elephants are unlikely to ever go to Africa and see them in the wild—I was in Cape Town for a conference this summer, and even from there the cost of traveling to look at elephants struck me as prohibitively expensive; I made do with penguins, ostriches, and baboons—if they encounter elephants at all it is likely to be in a zoos where their existence is not threatened (though breeding populations of a suitable size need to be maintained). Even confronted with this fact I still am willing to pay some amount of money to protect these creatures. There must be some sort of comfort I get from knowing about the existence of wild elephants, large charismatic mammals, and that is the good I and others who wish to help them are paying for (national parks seem to tap into this same desire for existence as well). I am willing to venture that there are very few people in this world who do not want wild elephants to exist.
The existence of wild elephants are not like chairs: if no one actively produces chairs there will not be any new chairs, but if no one interferes with elephants they will flourish, and it is only humans’ active involvement that threatens their existence. This is true of most environmental goods: humans unwittingly threaten their existence as they pursue some other goal. Water is dirtied as people try to remove waste from their immediate vicinity; forests are destroyed as people try to increase the supply of wheat. With increased prosperity there is a very strong tendency to consume goods that cause environmental harm as byproduct. This is the theory behind the first half of the effect in the proposed environmental Kuznets Curve (Kuznets’ conjectured curve was a proposed inverse-U shaped relationship between development, on the X-axis, and inequality), the reason environmental quality degrades with development.
Boding poorly for the elephants, the evidence for environmental degradation increasing as development increases is clear. What makes the theory controversial is the other half, the idea that people will actively spend enough on the environment so that greater levels of development will lead to environmental quality improvements. This seems to be true for some things, like large particle pollution in cities, but not others, like carbon emissions. Is harm to the elephants a visible enough harm that people are willing to intervene? Is the willingness to pay of people trying to protect the elephants greater than that of those trying to kill them? How does the international nature of the demand for the good that threatens elephants—ivory—as well as for the continued existence of wild elephants balance against local desires? How does local development play into this picture?
In the nineteenth century ivory was not only demanded for decorative carvings, but for utilitarian items such as buttons, billiard balls, and piano keys. The development of plastics created an (often more attractive) alternative for all of these uses, so the demand for ivory is now merely for ornamental objects. In western countries people wishing to protect elephants have largely persuaded the public that the ivory trade is harmful, laws have been passed against the trade, and to the best of my knowledge demand is quite low. Other markets with different cultural histories keep up worldwide demand. In 1980s Japan, increased prosperity drove up the price of ivory, and today demand seems to be coming from a growing middle class in China.
The fate of many wild elephants hangs on a number of international political economy questions: What is the local demand for environmental goods? How do potential changes in Africa’s development affect this demand, and the ability to extract ivory? As history suggests that given how poor the nations impacted are, environmental goods are luxuries, where demand will not be strong until people are much richer. Further, increased development lowers the cost of trading ivory more than it raises the cost of killing elephants. While locals may wish to protect elephants, the on the ground fight’s financing will come from aboard—the real fate of wild elephants hinges on the international competition between those who are willing to pay for ivory, and their networks of influence, and those who are willing to pay for the continued existence of the elephants, and their networks of influence. Sadly, looking at the fate of other once-abundant animals in areas with weak government, history doesn’t seem to have good news for the elephants.
For more on the environmental economics topics discussed here see:
Richard T. Carson, W. Michael Hanemann, Chapter 17 Contingent Valuation, In: Karl-Gran Mler and Jeffrey R. Vincent, Editor(s), Handbook of Environmental Economics, Elsevier, 2005, Volume 2, Pages 821-936, ISSN 1574-0099, ISBN 9780444511454, 10.1016/S1574-0099(05)02017-6.
Discussion (0) | September 9th, 2012 Categories: Uncategorized
