African elephants: the effect of property rights and political stability

MICHAEL L. NIESWIADOMY [*] African elephant populations have declined by more than 50% over the past 20 years. International outrage over the slaughter led to a worldwide ban on ivory sales beginning in 1989, despite the objections of many economists and scientists, and of several southern African countries that have established systems of property rights over elephants. Far from declining, elephant populations in many of these countries have increased to levels at or above the carrying capacity of the ecosystem. This article estimates the determinants of changes in elephant populations in 35 African countries over several time periods. The authors find that, controlling for other factors, countries with property rights systems or community wildlife programs have more rapid elephant population growth rates than do those countries that do not, Political instability and the absence of representative governments significantly lower elephant growth rates. (JEL O13, Q2) I. INTRODUCTION The plight of the African elephant is well documented. Hunted for its valuable ivory, the African elephant population has declined dramatically, from 1.3 million in 1979, to 600,000 in 1989, to 543,000 in 1994. Fourteen African countries have lost over 60% of their elephants during this period (see Figure 1). The abhorrence of the slaughter led to the worldwide ban on the ivory trade, as mandated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) Appendix 1 listing in October of 1989. However, there was not uniform agreement for the CITES ban. Several African countries, particularly those in southern Africa, were steadfastly opposed to the ban and refused to sign the agreement. The southern African countries favor a diametrically opposite strategy for saving the elephant--a system under which property rights over the elephants are assigned. Although there are several versions of this system, they all share a common element: local Africans receive benefit from the u se of the elephants, whether for hunting safaris, for photographic safaris, or for ivory and other elephant products. Two groups have emerged in the African elephant debate: the ivory ban group and the property rights group. The two sides each have cited data in support of their arguments. The ivory ban group notes that poaching has plummeted in recent years. The property rights groups argue that the countries that have banned ivory trade are the ones that have failed disastrously in the management of their elephants. The countries that have established property rights (primarily in southern Africa) have experienced significant increases in their elephant population. In response to intensive lobbying by the southern African countries, and to a growing skepticism among economists and some scientists regarding the effectiveness of the ban, [1] in June of 1997, the participating CITES countries voted to relax the CITES ban effective in 1999. Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Botswana will each be permitted to sell a limited amount of ivory to Japan. (In particular, the export quotas are 25.3 tons for Botswana, 20 tons for Zimbabwe, and 13.8 tons for Namibia; Sugal, 1997b.) This relaxation amounts to an experiment: the effect of this "downlisting" on elephant populations will surely be closely watched. Our principal purpose here is to bypass the usual rhetoric and examine this debate empirically. We review the literature in the following section, then in Section III we describe the details of the property rights systems or community wildlife programs that have been implemented. A simple empirical model is presented in Section IV. Section V describes the data, and in Section VI we present our results. A final section puts forth some conclusions. II. LITERATURE REVIEW An analysis of the factors influencing the African elephant population requires a review of at least two strands of literature: property rights and political/economic stability. …