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East-West
Conserving the Tigers in the Wild – Economic arguments
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
By Dr. A.K. Enamul Haque Ph.D
With Philip Shaw M.Sc.
The Tiger is one of the most magnificent animals of all. However, it is also one of the most threatened animals on earth. In a recent report, the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) fears "Once widespread across Asia, fewer than 5,000 wild tigers are now found in just 7% of the habitat they once occupied. The most immediate threat to wild tigers is poaching. Despite international and domestic bans, a thriving black market for tiger skins and bones threatens to wipe out wild tigers. China, with its booming economy, burgeoning human population and ancient traditions of using tiger parts as medicine and clothing, is the world's leading consumer of tiger products."
In this statement of the WWF, two most important causes are observed. First, destruction of habitat and second, poaching for skins, bones, and other parts. Save the Tiger Fund, which has been working to ensure protection of tigers and spends nearly US $1.3 million annually on projects and it has adopted the following 5Cs formula to protect tigers: "large Carnivores need substantial Core areas, free of human disturbance; Connected through corridors; with supporting local Communities; and Communication mechanisms in place to identify both the needs of tigers and local people connected locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally in tiger landscapes we called Tiger Conservation Units, or TCUs."
A bulk of their money is, however, spent on "understanding and education". In the past nine years only 1 million US$ was spent on anti-poaching activities (1995-2004). Clearly, the agency needed to understand more about how to save the tigers and so it has rightly spent its money for this. Therefore, to argue that poaching for parts is THE major cause of death is not tenable until there is hardcore and scientific evidence in favour of it.
The Save the Tiger Fund (STF) in its evaluation report mentioned that their investment pattern and the impacts of their work are more than satisfactory to them – meaning that the decision to spend most of the money for understanding and educating the public is the most important first step to protect tigers.
In fact, many of the documents circulated by big cat conservation groups suggest that human-animal conflict on habitat is a major reason for the killing of tigers for many years. In India and Bangladesh, killing tigers was regarded as an example of bravery on the part of an individual and so Mughals, British and also local lords used to go on tiger hunting trips in the past. In fact it set the initial mindset that killing tigers shall not be considered undesirable. One of the great leaders of Bengal Mr. Fazlul Haque was even named "The Tiger of Bengal" for his fighting spirit to protect the interest of Bengal during the Pakistani period.
Over time, this has changed. The tigers that used to live near Dhaka, the leopard that used to come to even our house (in Sylhet) to kill our domestic animals like goat, chicken, calves, etc., are no longer there. They were pushed out from our neighbourhood as we cleared the forests for settlement and for cultivation. They now live in jungles far away from our villages and towns. However, once we are out of their reach, many of us began to appreciate the magnanimity of the tiger itself. In the language of economics, once the supply shortage became a reality, we all started to feel the absence of it and became very much concerned of its existence. However, for those who still live near the forests or sometimes inside the forests, the problem is still a reality for them. Unfortunately, they cannot kill the animal rather the animal kills them. More importantly, the magnificent tigers kill their cows, goats, sheep and also their children. They suffer the most and so in some cases they retaliate. This is known as "poaching". A few weeks ago, villagers near the Sundarban forest killed a tiger in Bangladesh because it came outside the protected forest area and killed several individuals.
The story does not end here. Near the Sundarban Forests (where the tiger lives) it is impossible to find a single village where someone was not killed by tigers in the near past. Despite such vicious attacks by tigers, people seem to have been respecting the law. "Tiger Traffic" reports have not pointed out that tigers are poached in Bangladesh. One may ask why?
On the other hand, a BBC report published in March of this year suggests that in India alone where tigers are revered as the national animal of India, the numbers have fallen to 1,411, down from 3,642 in the last major survey in 2002. More than 2000 killed in 6 years time! This means that over the past 6 years time, when tiger conservationists spent more than 1.3 million US$ to protect tigers, in India alone roughly one tiger was killed in a day! Traffic reports on tigers jointly published by the IUCN and WWF suggest that in Indonesia the Sumatran Tigers are going to near extinction because of increasing tiger trading or poaching activities by the traders who trade tiger parts (skin, bones, and other body parts) in the market. Traffic reports on tigers (2008) suggest that in Vietnam, Russia, Thailand, and India and also in Indonesia illegal tiger parts were recovered by the law enforcement authorities. Clearly, these reports points out to the fact that there is significant demand for tiger parts in the "world". In China itself nearly two dozens individuals were convicted and served with capital punishment for illegally trading tiger parts.
Consequently, the two paragraphs above suggest to me that a) the habitat destruction or human-tiger conflicts on resource use in the forests and in the neighbourhood, and b) poaching tigers for trading are the major two reasons for the drop in tiger population in the world. The important question is how to stop it?
Exxon-Mobil and individual donors spend millions to protect tigers, the World Bank has recently announced their interest to fund communities to ensure that tigers are protected. China, which is blamed for creating such a huge demand for tiger parts, banned tiger-based medicine as early as in 1993. The new generation of traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners (trained in TCM colleges) are not even taught about the "usefulness" of tiger-based medicines to deal with diseases like rheumatism, body pain, etc. The Government of the Peoples' Republic of China even went ahead and withdrew the reference containing tiger-parts from TCM textbooks and encyclopedia. However, one should note that only 5% of traditional Chinese Medicines contain animal parts and these includes tiger parts, bones from various animals, liver and other body organs, etc. The Chinese also realized the problem of tiger parts quite early (of course, after almost all the tigers in China were killed) and so in the late 80s they started building tiger farms to produce tiger parts for medical use. However, before the experiment came to maturity, the Chinese government succumbed to international pressure and removed use of tiger parts in TCMs. As a result, the TCM based hospitals; registered TCM doctors cannot prescribe such medicine any more.
TCM in China has a long history. Processing of such medicine requires a significant effort but it can be done with very little technical knowledge (in fact one of the most popular brand of TCM is tiger-based wine which can be made even at the household level!). The medicine history of China is as old as its culture. Nearly 5000 years of written history and a high literacy rate (more than 97%) among the Chinese helped them to adapt the technology of adopting Traditional Chinese Medicines in every community. Therefore, the ban of tiger-based medicine possibly did not reduce the demand for tiger-parts in China. Moreover, since it is now illegal, a simple Economics 101 course would suggest that when demand exists a supply restriction would eventually promote illegal markets. Further knowledge of economics would suggest the following: a) tiger based medicine will only be available in the black markets and it will be a nightmare for the enforcement authority to stop all of these; b) the quality of medicine will come under question (since no one knows what is inside these medicines) and so effectiveness of medicines will gradually reduced. This could lead to two consequences – a) increased demand for tiger-based medicine to compensate for its reduced effectiveness (increased dosage) and b) reduction of demand for such medicine if and only if the patients are convinced of the effectiveness the alternative medicines. However, it takes a long time to persuade the population to change their attitude and accept an alternative. In many countries in the west, we sometime tend to promote such attitude as "cultural values".
At the same time, demand for more rights on the forests for the people who have been traditionally living in the forests is also considered a "sacred" duty of mankind. We have a strong moral obligation for protecting the livelihood of the tribal/backward people and we cannot evict these people out of their natural livelihood. Consequently, the foundations, which are interested to protection tigers, spend a significant amount of their funds to educate and to understand the human-tiger conflicts in order to find more humane solutions to the entire problem.
Consequently, it is important that we develop a strategy to deal with the matter based on tested knowledge and not on hypothetical knowledge. The conflict between conservationists and the local people is not new in the world. People have been fighting to preserve lifestyles (like farming in Europe), protecting forests (like fur trees in Canada), protect elephants (in Kenya), protect birds (in the tropics), and so on. The solutions, however, are not the same in all cases of conservation rather they are innovative and different in every case.
Subsidies for farmers had been argued to protect the lifestyle of the farmers, commercial production of timber has been used to protect forests, new technologies in energy are used to reduce the impact of global warming, and so on. Also banning was used temporarily for fur trading, whaling etc. to ensure that the population (within a species) grows above the critical minimum (known as a the non-convexity issue in natural sciences) and ensures sustainability, production quota had been used for Salmon fish and so on. All these, tell me that in this world of human beings, we cannot always consider one single solution to be the optimum. The best solution would depend on costs and benefits of using the best tools and finding the minimum cost solution.
In case of the tigers despite the imposition of a ban on tiger trading by China, poaching continued and today we have less tigers than before; despite sincere effort by the conservationists to protect the forests, educate the people and building awareness at the local level, we have less tigers today than in the past. This suggests that it is also time to study the relative efficiency of the tools used to preserve tigers.
The general conclusion reached at the CITES (Convention of Internationally Traded Endangered Species) in the 70s shall now be re-examined to answer a few critical questions so that it is possible to conserve tigers using economic incentives, market based instruments and maintaining liberty and dignity of humankind. The meeting in Singapore on the 5-9 June 2008 was basically to critically debate the issue with a view to develop strategies for conservation of tigers. In the meeting, six conservationists/economists met to explore ways to improve conservation outcomes for wild populations of the tiger by using economic tools.
After four days of brainstorming discussions from 9am to 5pm at the American Club in Singapore, and after carefully reviewing the relevant research and policy discussions on wild tiger conservation and going through the evidence of illegal trading of tiger body parts; it was clear to many of us that the problem is yet very poorly documented or understood. The solution that was forced upon by CITES was not based on systematic study of incentive mechanisms at the community levels and was not based on informed judgment. As a result, the likelihood of success to conserve tigers using "banning" as a tool is very low. Already the evidence is suggesting the contrary.
Furthermore, improvement in human knowledge both in terms of in situ and ex situ conservation practices, the opportunities for alternative livelihood options for the people living in the forests, the information on finding an effective alternative to TCMs (based on tiger body parts), the improvement in the lifestyle of the people of China, and the efficiency of raising tigers in a farm have significantly shifted the initial scenario when the ban was agreed up by the nations as a temporary means of conserving wild animals. The usefulness of such strategies and the cost benefit of alternative strategies should now be studied under the changed scenario. The meeting concluded, “It is possible that supplying tiger bone from a legal captive source could reduce the incentives for trade of illegally-sourced tiger bone from poached wild tigers.” The meeting recognized that many conservationists, who believe that it would worsen the situation for wild tigers, vigorously oppose this approach.
It is important that we also recognize the pain and sufferings of the people who are ready to take these medicines. They need to reduce their use. Alternative techniques now exist to supply such products until the time when an alternative arrangement can be developed. It is quite difficult to erase the thousands of years of memory of TCMs and argue that tiger-based medicines are of no use.
Finally, tiger-based medicines do not use live tigers rather they use dead tigers to produce the medicines. Today, the number of tigers in the zoos and safaris exceed the number of tigers in the forests. There are natural deaths in these entertainment centers as well as in tiger farms in China. Consequently, it is possible to "utilize" the tiger-corpses in China and one can see a win-win solution to the problem as long as the process does not generate new demand for it. This is the risk. As such careful studies are required to understand the changing nature of demand (from the re-introduction of TCMs based on tiger parts) for tiger parts in restricted and in the illegal markets and the effect of prices of tiger body parts in the illegal market. The meeting observed, "Experience with other species shows that lifting a ban does not automatically give rise to an increase in demand, and when it does, an increase in demand does not necessarily stimulate poaching. An increase in poaching would only occur under specific market conditions, the existence of which are uncertain in this market. Sound market research is needed to help determine whether a legal market in tiger bone is likely to stimulate poaching in the black market." The claim that "the existing trade ban policy is the only way forward because the tiger’s situation is too critical to risk any alternatives" ignores the fact that "the ban itself carries a potentially high future risk if demand for tiger bone persists and organized crime tightens its grip on the black market.” The meeting was attended by Dr. Robert Alexander (US), Ms Kirsten Conrad (Singapore), Dr. A.K. Enamul Haque (Bangladesh), Dr. Brendan Moyle (New Zealand), Dr. Santhakumar Valappan Nair (India) and Michael ‘t Sas-Rolfes (South Africa). The meeting was also illuminating to all of us as we debated for the five days on how to address the central issue of conservation without being emotional to it.
The Western View of the Tiger: Always On Our Mind, But Oh So Far Away.
By Philip Shaw M.Sc.
Sitting in my perch in Ontario Canada it is hard to imagine Tigers in the wild. Here we have the Detroit Tigers, a favourite baseball team of mine, and a few other college sports teams spread throughout North America. Politically of course we have the Tamil Tigers who have waged a civil war in Sri Lanka for many years now. The word "Tiger" in North America is revered partly because of the stately animal we only see in zoos and partly because Tigers have gained mythical status within the world's consciousness.
For readers of this column you know my experience with "The Tiger." That's the time near Katka Bangladesh when your loyal scribes Dr. Haque and myself actually walked by a Royal Bengal Tiger, one of the few left in the wild. After a few tense moments, mainly by your western correspondent, we made it back without a scratch and story to tell for a lifetime.
For me, it was a momentary thrill, which probably qualifies as one of the greatest moments of my life. Maybe it is the same for Dr. Haque. However, for those who live in or around the Sundarban forest in Bangladesh and India, the Tiger represents a life and death daily experience. Keeping one step ahead of them, is priority one every day.
For those of us in the west, the idea of TCM or Chinese Traditional Medicine also seems like a million miles away. Sure in some Chinese communities in places like San Francisco and Vancouver, Chinese Traditional medicine is practiced. However the idea of using Tiger parts for such traditions is widely panned in western circles, not unlike the widespread harvest of whales by east Asian countries.
Clearly though, its different far away from our shores. When Enamul told me he was traveling to Singapore to debate this issue with other economists and conservationists it didn't surprise me. You might remember he appeared on National Chinese television reported here in an earlier column. However, just the fact that there was another high-level meeting to discuss the issue should serve as an example to the west of the importance of the Tiger to our Asian friends. It's not only part of their culture but also an important economic cog in the greater Asian socio-economic world.
Enamul's piece this month is like a bright light shining on an issue, which we rarely hear about in the west. In the West our minions simply want to save the Tiger. However, in the east its much more complicated that that. They are continually at ground zero for Tiger preservation. Finding the right way to achieve that continues to be a challenge.
East/West is a joint column written by A.K. Enamul Haque and Philip Shaw. Dr. A.K.Enamul Haque Ph.D, is a Professor of Economics at United International University. Philip Shaw M.Sc. is farmer, writer and broadcaster in Dresden, Ontario, Canada. Each month they will bring their uniquely East/West perspectives to specific topics of world interest.
