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Review Horns of a dilemma Nina Black on a clear critique of efforts to counter the trade in wild animals The Extinction Market: Wildlife Trafficking and How to Counter it Vanda Felbab-Brown Hurst, £20.00 The trafficking of wild animals is one of the world’s most lucrative transnational crimes, valued at up to $23 billion a year. Thousands of species are viewed as money-making commodities, from elephants poached for their ivory and rhinos for their horns, to the humble pangolin, the most trafficked animal, whose scales are used in traditional Chinese medicine. Vanda Felbab-Brown’s compelling study, The Extinction Market, provides a thorough account of the challenges in tackling a complex phenomenon. A senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, in Washington, Felbab-Brown draws on her extensive knowledge of the global drug trade to provide a comparative study on fighting poaching and wildlife trafficking. The Extinction Market highlights the limitations of current approaches, which centre on the lack of consistency in conservation practices in different countries and the limited data on the trade in wild animals outside the United States and China. Felbab-Brown combines academic rigour with sensible pragmatism and is not afraid to challenge accepted policy or propose ideas of her own. When discussing China’s recent ivory ban, for example, the author proposes ‘campaigns showing attractive women rejecting suitors who display ivory trinkets’. The study is peppered with striking illustrations of how the drug and wildlife trades feed into one another, and is backed up by extensive fieldwork across Africa, Asia and Latin America. In Myanmar, for instance, some poachers are former opium poppy farmers who lost their previous illegal livelihoods due to the government’s poppy eradication campaigns. A central argument is that local perspectives and political contexts are often overlooked in the debate on trafficking. Felbab-Brown stresses that it is too simplistic to dismiss the trade in wildlife as a scourge on local communities. Some still associate conservation with colonial oppression. For example, the creation of South Africa’s Kruger National Park, one of Africa’s largest game reserves, pushed local tribes off the land. Conservation initiatives have tended to benefit already wealthy locals. White landowners in South Africa have also been accused of investing in nature reserves as a form of insurance against land grabs by the black population. Remedies to curb the trade in wild animals can put the protection of animals above the needs of the local community causing tension. To resolve this, Felbab-Brown proposes a community-based approach. She points to the An illegal haul of elephant tusks seized by customs officials in Hong Kong Conservation Initiative on Human Rights, a consortium of organizations that seeks to redress the problematic aspects of conservation by encouraging local initiatives such as ecotourism. Wider conservation issues are made apparent when Felbab-Brown examines such initiatives. One illustration comes from the Indonesian island of Seram, where a conservation group trained 20 parrot poachers to be wildlife guides. Birdwatchers were invited from the US to see the conservation effort, but the stream of tourists soon dwindled. Once their income from the project was in jeopardy, the guides made up their losses by resuming their poaching activities. Conservation projects that fail to offer a stable livelihood are shown to be all too common. Felbab-Brown makes it clear that there is ‘no silver bullet’ to solve these recurrent problems, and that genuine success stories are hard to find. This can at times make for bleak reading. I M AG E S A F P/G E T T Y 52 | the world today | december 2017 & january 2018
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Reading List : Zimbabwe Mugabe’s legacy The Extinction Market does propose solutions to reverse the damage caused by the trafficking of wild animals − but none is foolproof. One option is the use of direct payments to encourage environmental conservation efforts. In northern Cambodia, communities were paid not to harvest rare bird eggs, which helped to reduce poaching. But individuals who were not receiving payments then became jealous, and deliberately disturbed bird’s nests to get on to the payroll. Felbab-Brown also points to useful lessons from drug policy: targeting the middle operational layer of smuggling groups rather than kingpins; employing mild but swift punishments for low-level buyers; and promoting poacher rehabilitation. She steers readers towards acknowledging that the hunting, sale and capture of animals are crucial to many livelihoods. Short-term rewards offered by traffickers often divert communities from the long-term, but uncertain, rewards offered by conservation. The debate around the trafficking of wild animals is highly emotive, with conservation campaigners tending to rely on heartwrenching imagery of baby elephants and monkeys to hammer home their message. Yet The Extinction Market is predominantly built on careful reasoning. ‘Effective conservation is not merely about commitment and passion, it is equally about nuanced, hard-nosed, flexible and sometimes uncomfortable policies,’ Felbab-Brown writes. She shows the need for local experimentation, and calls on the conservation community to show creativity instead of ‘doggedly sticking to one policy regardless of how context has changed’. The outlook for wildlife is far from positive, but this book provides the tools needed to devise conservation solutions for the future. Nina Black is a press officer at Chatham House Becoming Zimbabwe: A history from the pre-colonial period to 2008 Brian Raftopoulos and Alois Mlambo (eds) Weaver Press Becoming Zimbabwe is an essential introduction to the history and complexity of Zimbabwean political economy and society. Its coverage of the period from 850 to 2008 provides a rich introduction to nation formation and notions of citizenship in the country. It builds a narrative from the pre-colonial period, through to the Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the white settlers, the war for liberation, and the dashed hopes of the new Zimbabwe.   Robert Mugabe: A life of power and violence, Stephen Chan University of Michigan Press Chan provides an insightful account of the rise of Robert Mugabe, documenting the rise of a national liberation figure who quickly gained a stranglehold on Zimbabwean politics. Chan builds an image of a self-righteous man, driven by conviction and a determination to hold on to power.   Morgan Tsvangirai, At the Deep End Eye Books Joshua Nkomo, The Story of My Life Methuen In these two autobiographies, two political adversaries of Mugabe document their battles with the president. Nkomo wrote in London in exile in the early 1980s, and the story stops short of his return to Zimbabwe to unite his party into ZANU, and take up the position of vice president. Tsvangirai’s includes a first-hand account of the negotiations around the power-sharing agreement that led to the 2008 government of national unity.   Zimbabwe Land Reform: Myths and Realities, Ian Scoones et al Boydell & Brewer Land reform in Zimbabwe remains a highly emotive issue. The controversy, which fast-tracked the transition of land away from a white minority, has led to a number of myths. Scoones challenges these assumptions and presents a complex picture of a changing rural Zimbabwe and the potential for advancing the agricultural sector. The House of Hunger Dambudzo Marechera Heinemann Zimbabwe has produced some of the continent’s most significant English literary writers, and there is a great body of literature from the country to explore. Marechera’s The House of Hunger deals with life in Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, while reflecting on a deeper emerging national consciousness. Ideal for those seeking to be challenged or shocked by their next read! Chris Vandome, Research Analyst, Africa Programme, Chatham House the world today | december 2017 & january 2018 | 53

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Reading List : Zimbabwe

Mugabe’s legacy

The Extinction Market does propose solutions to reverse the damage caused by the trafficking of wild animals − but none is foolproof. One option is the use of direct payments to encourage environmental conservation efforts. In northern Cambodia, communities were paid not to harvest rare bird eggs, which helped to reduce poaching. But individuals who were not receiving payments then became jealous, and deliberately disturbed bird’s nests to get on to the payroll.

Felbab-Brown also points to useful lessons from drug policy: targeting the middle operational layer of smuggling groups rather than kingpins; employing mild but swift punishments for low-level buyers; and promoting poacher rehabilitation. She steers readers towards acknowledging that the hunting, sale and capture of animals are crucial to many livelihoods. Short-term rewards offered by traffickers often divert communities from the long-term, but uncertain, rewards offered by conservation.

The debate around the trafficking of wild animals is highly emotive, with conservation campaigners tending to rely on heartwrenching imagery of baby elephants and monkeys to hammer home their message. Yet The Extinction Market is predominantly built on careful reasoning.

‘Effective conservation is not merely about commitment and passion, it is equally about nuanced, hard-nosed, flexible and sometimes uncomfortable policies,’ Felbab-Brown writes. She shows the need for local experimentation, and calls on the conservation community to show creativity instead of ‘doggedly sticking to one policy regardless of how context has changed’.

The outlook for wildlife is far from positive, but this book provides the tools needed to devise conservation solutions for the future.

Nina Black is a press officer at Chatham House

Becoming Zimbabwe: A history from the pre-colonial period to 2008 Brian Raftopoulos and Alois Mlambo (eds) Weaver Press Becoming Zimbabwe is an essential introduction to the history and complexity of Zimbabwean political economy and society. Its coverage of the period from 850 to 2008 provides a rich introduction to nation formation and notions of citizenship in the country. It builds a narrative from the pre-colonial period, through to the Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the white settlers, the war for liberation, and the dashed hopes of the new Zimbabwe.   Robert Mugabe: A life of power and violence, Stephen Chan University of Michigan Press Chan provides an insightful account of the rise of Robert Mugabe, documenting the rise of a national liberation figure who quickly gained a stranglehold on Zimbabwean politics. Chan builds an image of a self-righteous man, driven by conviction and a determination to hold on to power.   Morgan Tsvangirai, At the Deep End Eye Books Joshua Nkomo, The Story of My Life Methuen In these two autobiographies, two political adversaries of Mugabe document their battles with the president. Nkomo wrote in London in exile in the early 1980s, and the story stops short of his return to Zimbabwe to unite his party into ZANU, and take up the position of vice president. Tsvangirai’s includes a first-hand account of the negotiations around the power-sharing agreement that led to the 2008 government of national unity.   Zimbabwe Land Reform: Myths and Realities, Ian Scoones et al Boydell & Brewer Land reform in Zimbabwe remains a highly emotive issue. The controversy, which fast-tracked the transition of land away from a white minority, has led to a number of myths. Scoones challenges these assumptions and presents a complex picture of a changing rural Zimbabwe and the potential for advancing the agricultural sector.

The House of Hunger Dambudzo Marechera Heinemann Zimbabwe has produced some of the continent’s most significant English literary writers, and there is a great body of literature from the country to explore. Marechera’s The House of Hunger deals with life in Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, while reflecting on a deeper emerging national consciousness. Ideal for those seeking to be challenged or shocked by their next read!

Chris Vandome, Research Analyst, Africa Programme, Chatham House the world today | december 2017 & january 2018 | 53

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