ELEPHANTS & IVORY

© IFAW/J Hrusa/Addo Elephant National Park, South Africa
has proven vulnerable to abuse, 146 even though it is
included in a number of international agreements,
including Agenda 21 from the 1992 Earth Summit in
Rio. It remains, however, of paramount importance
when attempting to protect and conserve
threatened species such as elephants, where
uncertainty, as we have seen, is pervasive.
BIOECONOMICS
Those who argue that wildlife must pay its own
way in order to be conserved are neglecting
the economic analyses that indicate attaching a
dollar value to a species does not guarantee its
survival and may actually promote its demise. 147
In fact, as noted earlier, for some large mammals
with relatively slow growth rates, it may be
economically more profitable to kill every animal
as quickly as possible and invest the profits in
growth industries, rather than wait for the species
to recover to the point where they could sustain
biologically an annual catch. 148
The uncertain and volatile global economy
since 2008 raises other concerns specifically
related to elephants. It now appears that some
individuals see ivory – sometimes termed “white
gold” – as a sound financial investment. As
demand for ivory continues to increase in the
wake of dwindling supplies, the price of ivory
continues to rise. Add in the currency exchange
benefits of buying ivory in US dollars and selling
it in increasingly more valuable Chinese Yuan,
makes the investment even more appealing. 149
If hoarding ivory as an investment and a hedge
against inflation becomes commonplace, it will
simply put more pressure on elephants and on
those who attempt to limit poaching and illegal
international trade.
PHYSICS
Physics tells us that there are laws of nature,
including importantly, the second law of
thermodynamics, 150 and that there is no such thing
as a “free lunch”. 151
There are even economists today who admit
that the core economic model of the last 100
years “violates a number of basic physical
laws” and is “inconsistent with a large body of
empirical evidence about actual human behavior”.
Such economists “call for a new framework for
economic theory and policy that is consistent with
observed human behavior…and directly confronts
the cumulative negative effects of the human
economy on the Earth’s life support systems”. 152
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers,
among others, tell us that humans value the
Earth and its inhabitants in a variety of ways
beyond the purely economic 153 and that, at some
point, values other than money may actually
determine human quality of life and happiness. 154
At least one country, Bhutan, has actually
abandoned the flawed and misleading metric of
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or Gross National
Product, and replaced it with something it calls
Gross National Happiness. 155
While we’re back on the topic of economics,
experience and reason tell us that economic
activities, including job creation, poverty
alleviation, and sustainable development,
among other distractions, are human activities
that occur within the environment. 156 Without a
functioning environment, both society and the
economy collapse.
PHILOSOPHY
The recognition of the continuum that exists
between humans and other animals, including
elephants, in terms of their common evolutionary
legacy, shared genes, anatomy, physiology,
intelligence and social psychology, has led to the
argument that “there should be some continuum in
moral standards”, 157 a view that seems logical but
one that has yet to become generally accepted.
Philosophy and ethics also reinforce the view
mentioned earlier that living organisms and the
nonliving components of the biosphere have
values other than economic value. It is generally
accepted, for example, that individual organisms
and populations have intrinsic value, i.e. value
beyond their utility to humans. 158
WHERE TO FROM HERE?
This concludes our cursory survey of some
important things that a variety of disciplines
teach us about the nature of elephants and the
natural world. We use this information in the next
chapter to explore how a consideration of all our
knowledge and understanding would dramatically
change our approach to the conservation of
elephants now, and in the future.
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