The political difference between elephants and tuna

As mentioned in the brief, Tanzania and Zambia were rebuffed today in their attempts to relax the international ban on ivory sales at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Doha. The decision is being hailed as a victory for conservationists after some setbacks earlier in the week: 

The rulings were a rare victory for environmentalists at the two-week meeting where they have endured defeats of proposals ranging from an export ban on Atlantic bluefin tuna to a shark conservation plan to a measure to regulate trade of red and pink corals.

Not that I approve of killing elephants for their ivory, but the economic double-standard at work here seems troubling. The tuna ban, for instance, was strongly opposed by Japan, which imports 80 percent of the world’s bluefin and led a concerted lobbying effort to have the current rules overturned.

Japan has, for years, employed a similar strategy in its campaign to loosen restrictions on whaling, exchanging foreign aid to disinterested countries like Togo and St. Kitts who join the International Whaling Comission and vote with the pro-whaling bloc. Economist Christian Dippel has studied this phenomenon and wrote about it in a recent piece for FP.  

Aid-receiving countries like Tanzania and Zambia presumably don’t have the resources to mount such a campaign, which is a large part of the reason they want the ban lifted in the first place. As Zambia’s Minister of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources Catherine Namugala put it, "We can’t justify failure to take a child to school because we are using resources to conserve elephants. I appeal to allow Zambia to utilize the natural resources given to us by God."

Again, I tend to side with the conservationists on this, but I certainly understand the frustration of poor-country governments who are expected to make economic sacrifices for the sake of endangered species while the world’s second-largest economy continues to hunt species on the brink of extinction. 

Update: New protections for hammerhead and white-tip sharks have also been shot down. Guess who led the opposition to them.