Trade in wildlife
Just let them get on with it

Poor people who rely on nature's gifts should be helped to help themselves


CONSERVATIONISTS and animal-welfare types please take note: trade in wildlife products, as long as it is properly managed, is an indispensable boon for the poor. And what is more, it's big business, worth around $300 billion in 2005—chiefly in timber and fisheries.

That is the message of a new report* from TRAFFIC, a group based in Cambridge, England, which monitors the commerce in undomesticated animals, freely growing plants and their products. It also notes that some countries have a large domestic trade in wildlife, unreported by statistics. Estimates of how many people depend on the wildlife trade for at least part of their income vary from 200m globally to a billion in Asia and the Pacific alone. And a new report due to be released at the Convention on Biological Diversity in Bonn says damage to nature could halve living standards for the poor.

For these people, wildlife provides not only cash but food and health care (in the form of natural medicines). That is particularly important for the world's poorest people, in marginal agricultural areas. As the report points out, many poverty-reduction efforts depend on the survival of natural wildlife. Wildlife trade also provides cash that helps children go to school.

Take Uganda's lake fisheries, which yield fish worth over $200m a year while employing 135,000 fishermen and 700,000 small operators in processing, trade and associated industries. The fisheries also generate $87.5m in exports and contribute fully 2.2% of GDP. The report also highlights the wild-meat trade in seven countries in east and southern Africa: the victuals consumed are the equivalent of up to 40% of household monthly income.

Well-managed trade, as exists in species such as seahorses, humphead wrasse and certain ornamental fish, not only promotes these species' own conservation but can also help the preservation of other important animals and plants. But the report laments that far too much of the harvesting of, and trade in, wild products is poorly supervised, with the result that habitats are degraded and stocks depleted.

One important point: allowing for the secure ownership of wildlife resources by a clearly defined group of poor people is essential for sustainable harvesting. If no public authority is able to offer secure tenure of land or resource rights to a reasonable number of people, there is little incentive to invest in long-term sustainability. This, for example, accounts for the over-collection in central Africa of rattan, a climbing plant that is used to make wicker furniture. Nobody owns the forest or wilderness where rattan usually grows—and as a result it is increasingly scarce.

Establishing such property rights is hard; it may mean the exclusion of “outsiders”, often other poor people or even refugees, from using wildlife resources. But it is necessary: many of the problems involved in the marine aquarium trade in wild fish in Indonesia and the Philippines, for example, are caused by migrant fishermen. In Gabon the government is considering giving village associations a legal monopoly on selling bush meat to outside traders.

One recommendation in the report is to establish wildlife farms; another is certification schemes that help poor people to advertise the sustainability of their wares. The wildlife trade is rarely high on official agendas, and those who rely on it are often the weakest groups in society. It makes sense to treat them, and their business, as a solution, not a problem.

* “Trading nature”, by Dilys Roe, TRAFFIC, 2008

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