How Many Wildebeest Do You Need?
Norton-Griffiths, Mike. How Many Wildebeest Do You Need? World Economics.Vol. 8, No. 2, April–June 2007.
Mike Norton-Griffiths, D.Phil. is a long-time resident of Kenya, where he researches into issues of land use economics and the economic foundations of conservation and land use policy.
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
So, how many wildebeest do you need? How many elephants is enough? And what do you need them for? These are not trivial questions, for they focus attention on the need for some hard decisions. A conservation biologist will maintain that while the actual number of wildebeest at any particular time is irrelevant, what is important is to ensure adequate space and habitat so the population can vary as it must in response to environmental vicissitudes. In contrast, a free market environmentalist would approach this problem secure in the knowledge that there is indeed a market for wildebeest which will deliver a socially and economically efficient number of animals. Naturally, neither of these views is wrong-which is not the same as saying that either is right.
Consider as an example the Serengeti migratory wildebeest population which, despite 40 years of scientific monitoring and research, has effortlessly grown from around 250,000 individuals in the 1950s to some 1.5 million today, going up a bit in good (rainy) years and down a bit in drier years (Figure 1). That this extraordinary phenomenon still exists is due to the vast 30,000 km2 area over which they are able to migrate, from the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania during the wet season up to the Maasai Mara Game Reserve in Kenya during the dry season…
Here now is a problem to exercise both the conservation biologist and the free market environmentalist, for what is the optimal number of wildebeest given that tourists probably only need to see some 300,000 to experience the raw majesty of the migration? Kenya will balance the benefits to be gained from developing agriculture on what was previously pastoral land against any possible tourism losses, while Tanzania may still wish to have as many wildebeest as possible to enhance the international reputation of the Serengeti National Park. Difficult choices indeed…
These differentials between the net returns to pastoral landowners from agricultural, livestock and wildlife production offer the clearest explanation we have to date for the spread of cultivation throughout the rangelands, for the rapid evolution of property rights and for the concomitant widespread and comprehensive loss of wildlife throughout Kenya. The uncompetitive returns from wildlife compared with other production systems encapsulate the entire dynamics of change observed on the rangelands. They focus our attention on the fact that, under current conditions, wildlife simply cannot compete economically with livestock or agricultural production, and as a result pastoral landowners are disinvesting in their wildlife resource…
Clearly, at least three bundles of new policy instruments are called for with the overall policy objective of transforming wildlife from a liability for pastoral landowners into an asset that is worth investing in. The first is an economic bundle to improve the revenues that landowners receive from wildlife; next is a property rights bundle to settle issues of ownership and user rights to wildlife; and finally an institutional bundle to create the necessary enabling environment for what is, strictly speaking, private sector conservation…
The objective of the economic bundle is to make the net returns from wildlife production economically competitive with other production systems (agriculture and livestock), especially in the 95% of the rangelands where tourist do not go, so that it becomes in the economic interest of landowners to invest in wildlife rather than get rid of it…
It is the weak and conflicting nature of the property rights to wildlife that lie at the heart of the general loss of wildlife from rangelands. Livestock are owned and have value, and their owners accordingly invest in and profit from their upkeep, maintenance and use. As a result, the agricultural areas and rangelands of Kenya are stuffed full of livestock. In contrast, wildlife are not owned by anyone, and accordingly have little or no value to those on whose land they are found. Any damage caused by wildlife is thus seen as a loss-unlike with livestock, where benefits in general outweigh costs. And since wildlife have no value they are being eradicated wholesale throughout the country. Indeed, the quite devastating scale of the bush meat trade in Kenya is a stark reminder of what happens to resources that are neither owned nor have value to the owners of the land where they are found…
Extraordinary as it may seem, not a single tourism company in Kenya invests in wildlife or habitat management even though their very economic future depends upon the resource; and neither do most landowners. Both decisions stem from the lack of clear-cut property rights to wildlife: not only are the returns from wildlife meagre, but why invest in something that is not yours?…
While it is clear that conservation “policy” now creates perverse incentives for landowners to get rid of wildlife, it is nonetheless too simple to say that it is just a matter of land use economics: there is undoubtedly more to it than that. We need a new mindset, one which reflects the realities of pastoral life today.
It is instructive here to compare the policies and approach of the agricultural and the conservation sectors in Kenya. The agricultural sector owns neither crops nor livestock, but harnesses market forces to create incentives for producers to produce. It promotes production through training and extension; by research and development of new germplasms and technologies; by subsidies and infrastructure support; by providing capital and loans; and by creating and supporting both markets and producer prices.
In contrast, the conservation sector claims ownership to all wildlife and natural biodiversity, yet imposes a range of policy instruments which create disincentives to invest in conservation and make it economically sensible to eradicate wildlife. It supports no research or development into wildlife utilisation techniques; provides no subsidies, capital or loans or support to infrastructure; neither creates nor supports markets; and passively condones the diversion of revenues away from the producers and custodians of the wildlife resource to the central government, to county councils and to tourism cartels.
It is a curious fact that among the last of the state monopolies to survive in Africa are the state conservation monopolies. And it is the sad fact that the precarious condition of biodiversity and wildlife conservation in much of Africa is the direct consequence of hopelessly inefficient and bloated state conservation monopolies aided and abetted by international conservation organisations which, with their seemingly limitless resources, lack of accountability and hidden agendas, wield such power and influence over conservation policy. Together, they have created an unholy alliance that perpetuates on the one hand inefficiency and misuse of conservation resources, and on the other a perverse policy environment that creates disincentives for conservation…
Nonetheless, the first attempt to improve matters in the face of such a manifestly catastrophic failure in conservation policy came on the initiative of a group of Kenyan MPs mainly from the pastoral areas. In December 2004, the Kenyan Parliament passed an important amendment to the Wildlife Act which sought to make the KWS answerable to its Board of Trustees rather than to the government, to provide for greater participation on the Board by the landowners who actually produce wildlife, and to address the issue of compensation for the loss of life and damage to property by wildlife. This amendment came from the floor of the house, it went through all the required procedures, debates and public consultations, including with the Attorney General’s Office, and was properly voted on by the parliamentarians.
Yet, following some deliberately misleading lobbying of the President by two anti-hunting American NGOs, the Humane Society and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), the President of Kenya refused to sign the amended Wildlife Act into law. Clearly, these two hugely wealthy overseas NGOs have more influence on the President and on policy than do Kenya’s own parliamentarians.
More recently, and after much prodding and badgering, the government at last instituted in September 2006 a national consultative review of wildlife policy which was to lead to a new Wildlife Act. A National Steering Committee was established, a policy drafting team was appointed, universities held workshops, and views were sought from one and all throughout the country in a series of two national and 22 regional seminars. But, once again foreign NGOs were able to hijack the entire consultative process. Action Aid (which supports extreme minority land rights issues and is vehemently anti-private landowners) literally shipped in paid, rent-a-mob crowds who reduced everything to an endlessly sterile shouting match about the reintroduction of sport hunting, while IFAW launched a massively well funded publicity campaign in newspapers and on TV, with posters in Nairobi city and the international airport.
No one has any objection to IFAW holding its opinions, but one can and must object to the lengths it is prepared to go to achieve its objectives. It is bad enough that the international conservation NGOs and their donors sat back supinely for years without ever challenging the government’s conservation policies, but IFAW and its ilk are taking things to altogether new and dangerous levels.
As Deepak Lal so elegantly puts it:
“Foreign NGOs claim to speak on behalf of the world’s poor but in fact speak the language of the world’s rich and invariably seek their own agendas and purpose rather than those who they purport to help. Through their financial strength and access to political elites, especially in poor countries, they are able to subvert the representative democratic process and insinuate foreign minority views into what are supposedly parliamentary majority voting systems.”
The exercise of such power without accountability, transparency or responsibility is a dangerous and heady mix. IFAW and Action Aid represent at the most a million members, mainly in North America and Europe. Why should they determine Kenyan wildlife policy, rather than Kenya’s own elected parliamentarians?
