Stop Stimulating the Ivory Trade; Just Stop Trade

The close of 2012 brought a glimmer of hope for the world’s elephants when Tanzania withdrew its proposal to reduce protection for its elephant population and sell its considerable stockpile of legal ivory through the CITES process.

But it was a brief respite. Three days into 2013, Hong Kong seized 779 elephant tusks—just over a tonne of ivory, the third large seizure there in as many months—bringing the total to around six tonnes. That’s at least 600 dead elephants.

Right now, the subject of ivory trading is on everyone’s lips: to trade or not to trade? There’s also a lot of talk about reducing demand by targeting consumers with awareness campaigns. But no one talks about targeting the individuals, governments, and vested interests that stimulate the trade.

Some facts:

  • There are simply not enough elephants in the world to satisfy the growing demand, legal or otherwise, for ivory.
  • China, where demand is skyrocketing, is taking steps to increase ivory-selling capacity, which will fuel even greater demand. China now advocates the sale of seized, as well as legal, stockpiles.
  • In the period leading up to the late 1980s, when it was legal to trade ivory, African elephant numbers plummeted by almost two-thirds. The 1989 ivory trade ban was put in place because the trade system did not work.
  • Ivory buyers and sellers are assaulted by a range of mixed messages about the legality or otherwise of ivory. Likewise, religious followers in key consumer countries receive little or no guidance from their leadership.
  • Legal ivory markets provide a laundering mechanism for illegal ivory.
  • Talking about trade costs money. Millions of dollars are spent each year by governments and NGOs on flying to meetings, paying consultants, holding workshops, preparing papers and initiatives to address the issue of trade. All that talk and busy work, and elephants keep dying.
  • Any trade system (workable or otherwise) costs huge amounts of money to administer, regulate, monitor, legislate.
  • Protecting elephants costs much more than money. Every single day, men and women across Africa and Asia put their lives at risk to protect elephants from ruthless pursuit by poachers and traders. Every day elephants are killed; some days people are killed too. The social fabric of people and elephants is irrevocably torn.
  • Enforcement is weak. Convictions are rare, and penalties, if ever applied, are negligible. Ivory trading is a criminal act involving organized international criminal networks. It corrupts communities and undermines national security, yet it is still treated essentially as a misdemeanor.


Ivory Trade Decision Looming


In March 2013, the question of ivory trading will again come to the fore, at the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES. A decision-making process for the resumption of international trade in elephant ivory is on the table for discussion. Once again, the meeting will doubtless be mired in hostile, acrimonious, and polarized debate.

All this will take place against the backdrop of elephants being illegally slaughtered in unprecedented numbers, their tusks mostly spirited into the lucrative black market of China, where initiatives are under way to increase the capacity to buy and sell ivory. Up to 90 percent of the ivory available in China is illegal, and it finds its way onto the market alongside the “legal” supplies CITES has sanctioned.

Trade is offered up as a panacea. The argument is this: by supplying the market with legal ivory, there will be no need to get ivory illegally. As the stockpile sales have shown, this rationale has been a spectacular failure.

But what if there was no trade at all? What if all trade in ivory, domestic as well as international, was illegal? If there were no legal markets, then anyone and everyone caught buying or selling ivory would be breaking the law. Wouldn’t that be simple?

With no potential future market, there would be no need to stockpile ivory and spend vast (undetermined) amounts of money building facilities, storing ivory in appropriate (humidified) conditions, transporting it to holding facilities, guarding it, and training enforcement agencies to try to figure out what is and what isn’t legal ivory.

And we could all stop talking about it.

Imagine the amount of money spent internationally, year after year, attending meetings, flying around the globe to workshops, writing documents, arguing the ivory trade’s pros and cons, as well as the millions spent every three years to put ivory high on the agenda at CITES meetings, to the detriment of other less charismatic, even more threatened, species.

The reality is that the money generated by ivory sales does not get reinvested in elephant conservation or in the communities that live alongside elephants. All too often the money disappears into central coffers to plug a budget hole somewhere else, further disenfranchising communities and increasing their hostility to wildlife.

A total ban is straightforward. And it’s ultimately likely to be the least costly option in terms of both dollars and fatalities, elephant and human. And it’s the most successful way to secure a future for elephants in the wild. Imagine what would happen to wildlife tourism if there were no more elephants to see? Tanzania, for instance, generates at least 17 percent of its GDP from tourism, the majority of which is wildlife tourism. It directly employs more than 30,000 people, who in turn support extended families. It indirectly employs many more.

There are no easy answers, but a total ivory trade ban is the one strategy we know has worked.

Mary Rice is the Executive Director of the Environmental Investigation Agency, an NGO based in London and Washington, D.C., that investigates and exposes environmental crime and illegal trade in natural resources.


  1. Daniel Jost
    Zurich, Switzerland
    February 17, 2013, 6:25 pm

    National Geographic,

    Is there no imaginable way of by-passing CITES and enforcing conservation the Sea Shepherd way? In spite of some comments on their supposed “effectiveness”, the overwhelming majority of evidence suggests (as well as my personal experience with them over the phone, by email and on their Facebook page…) that they are a mostly useless and corrupt organization. What good has a ban on rhino horn trade done for the rhinos…

  2. Harry Kramp
    February 6, 2013, 11:57 pm

    I’m so sure, wee all in this site, comment.,share, or maybe sign the petition about of animal safe, not in the first time we to do it..,but we see..,it’s always we must to repeat and repeated again., I think we must get a solution for the next moment, how we must to do.., make the countries where they can’t stop this action with an embargo? and what we have a powers for that? and how about with UNO? I think UNO can give a solution, a big solution nothing else organisation in the world..,
    And I have a questions: From Where UNO can get funding for all their efforts? both for peace, humanitarian aid and all sorts of people who work at the cost of the UN?
    If it comes from the dues of member countries, then I ask from where did the country get the money to pay for it?
    If not from us as an international community?
    whether you are deliberately silent without making any decisive action without a political or even within the United Nations is already occupied solely for political purposes?
    and you take advantage of the UN organization as the international agency only to disguise it and you can work with a big salary there of sweat all mankind without you able to make a breakthrough to convince everyone, because the perpetrators still do not get penalized
    although it may later be sanctioned is my own country and I have to accept the risk is also..,if me was ready why do you not: GOING TO ACTION?

  3. Haibin Wang
    Beijing, China
    January 31, 2013, 3:58 am

    Will a total ban on ivory trade work this tima? It seems to me that the previous ban from 1990 – 1999 failed.

  4. kat
    January 17, 2013, 8:00 am

    This is not right. !!!! It makes me cry !!! :'( that exactly why I’m going to Nairobi !!!! And why I donate money to the trust

  5. David Block
    Oxford, United Kingdom
    January 17, 2013, 6:46 am

    Cannot money be raised and used for a ‘bloody’ graphic advertising campaign in China to illustrate the terrible carnage wreaked by their taste for ornaments. Can the Chinese not be shamed by the realisation that they are financing this horrible slaughter?

  6. jared Crawford
    Nairobi Kenya
    January 16, 2013, 10:05 am

    Yes, the CITES implementing agencies in both the exporting and importing countries are responsible for ensuring that CITES permits are valid before a trade can take place. However, the Secretariat does indeed maintain the function of examining and verifying permits. The Scientific Authority in the country of export must prove non-detriment and to do so may consult with the CITES Secretariat to ensure that the permits are appropriate or valid.

    Not a perfect system but, as Mary Rice says, the teeth are in place. Export permits only remain valid for 6 months so perhaps public and political pressure may be applied to stall shipments such as the Zimbabwean baby elephants until either the Secretariat rejects the permits or they expire.

  7. ivor Harrison
    chichester U.K.
    January 15, 2013, 1:42 pm

    All ivory product should be burnt regardless of its age,it should be illegal to own this product, the wardens should be given the right to shoot to kill these poachers ,I know why these guys kill Animals but being poor should be no reason why we should try & understand there problems, I know that it may have already been said but is there any way that the Elephant tusks can be dyed or made useless ? ,time is running out & it is now time to get serous about the poachers,my comments may seem excessive but lets just save these wonderful creatures for good,Ivor..

  8. christine mackinnon
    January 15, 2013, 11:43 am

    Yes, trade in anything from an endangered species should be stopped. Maybe we should also try and avoid purchasing goods from countries that allow such trade. I know Chinese goods may prove tricky to avoid but we have to do something to stop this madness.

  9. F Kearney
    January 15, 2013, 8:03 am

    Mary. Thank you for providing a clear and rational argument to this seemingly endless debate. I sometimes wonder how the debate would go if it was held in an arena where those advocating trade had to come and watch the animals be shot, their faces begin hacked off to obtain the tusks and any orphans left behind desperately wondering what has just happened to their family; if indeed they are not killed too.

  10. Mark Jones
    London, England
    January 15, 2013, 2:16 am

    Thank you Mary for talking absolute sense. Legalising trade is not, and never will be, the answer to wildlife poaching stimulated by demand for high value animal products such as ivory, rhino horn and tiger parts. Legal trade creates an opportunity for the laundering of illegal product, increases demand by bringing buyers to the market who would not buy black market goods, and confuses consumers by legitimising products. If we are serious about conserving animals like elephants and rhinos, trade in ivory and many other products from endangered species must be banned, and the illegal trade controlled through enforement and public education programmes.

  11. Caroline Mason
    January 14, 2013, 3:41 pm

    Is CITES fit for purpose? LionAid are suggesting a new approach – CITES woeful response to the recent export of elephant calves from Zimbabwe to China demonstrates this. And how much does CITES cost the taxpayer. With the power of the internet, creating awareness of, and petitioning for hunting bans etc is so much easier and is, in some cases, starting to have an effect. And, after all, do we want trade in endangered species?

    • Mary Rice
      January 14, 2013, 4:06 pm

      The CITES secretariat does not issue or approve CITES permits prior to import or export. CITES is administered at a national level by each Party (country). So the authority responsible for issuing the CITES Export permit for the elephants sent from Zimbabwe to China will be the relevant Zimbabwe Government agency. Any breach can be referred to the CITES secretariat for review and in fact the CITES Secretariat today released a statement saying that they were investigating the case.

      CITES is currently the only formal mechanism we have for dealing with Wildlife Trade issues. It is certainly not perfect but it does have teeth if it chooses to use them. The trouble is, politics gets in the way.

  12. Pelletier laurent
    January 14, 2013, 1:51 pm

    it s a shame…