By some calculations, the planet has twelve years left. By other calculations, just seven years left. And according to Prince Charles, we have just eighteen months left. What’s at stake here is how long we have before climate crisis is irreversible. 

England declared a Climate Emergency in 2019. Followed by Ireland. The Pope declared a Climate Emergency. Some 7,000 universities and colleges around the world have united to declare a Climate Emergency.

China and India have not indicated any leanings to join in, as both nations are sitting on economies that depend on copious numbers of coal-fired power-plants. Neither nation has any intention of weaning-off coal. Both nations mention vague figures like reducing coal consumption by 2030 – far too late.

Third pole

Lying between the world’s most populous nations, China and India, sits Tibet—an occupied region, under China’s iron-fisted rule since 1950. Tibet is the forgotten part of the climate crisis conversation.

There is a lot of press about Arctic melting and Antarctic melting, but precious little about meltdown at ‘the Third Pole’, meaning the Tibetan Plateau.

This vast region does what the other two poles cannot—it supplies a dozen nations downstream with freshwater. In fact, the rivers sourced in Tibet supply freshwater to over 1.5 billion people downstream–which represents a fifth of the entire global population.

That supply of water starts with dripping glaciers in Tibet. Which are melting twice as fast as originally thought, according to recent research that compares spy satellite mapping from the 1970s with satellite mapping from today. 

Tibet sits on the largest area of permafrost outside of the Arctic and Antarctic–and that is rapidly thawing too, which could release large amounts of methane–a greenhouse gas that is 30 times more potent than CO2. Tibet’s vast swathes of grassland are highly effective carbon sinks–and these grasslands are under attack from rampant Chinese mining ventures–which have accelerated since the arrival of the train in Lhasa in 2006. This has led to encroaching desert taking over grasslands.

Melting glaciers

Why does this matter? In the short run, rapidly melting glaciers do not pose a threat, except from major flooding. In the long run, melting glaciers pose a threat that has never been seen before—never in thousands of years.

If the glaciers vanish, the rivers of Tibet will run dry, only fed by monsoon rainwater. And the dozens of China’s megadams on the rivers of Tibet will cease to operate. Billions will be without river water.

China and India have groundwater supplies, but these have been tapped to the point where precious little remains.

Some scientific surveys say that fifty percent of meltdown of Himalayan glaciers is caused by CO2 emissions, with China responsible for around thirty percent of the global total for emissions of this deadly greenhouse gas, and India responsible for around seven percent.

The other 50 percent of meltdown could be due to the rain of black soot on the Himalayas, from both sides—from the Chinese side and the Indian side.

Black Soot, aka Black Carbon, is not a greenhouse gas, it is a rain of minute particles from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, wood, and from sources like diesel engines. Minute black particles, the PM2.5 particles, are highly hazardous to human health because they can get into the lungs—and stay there. Deadly for humans–and deadly for glaciers.

Black soot

Glaciers are adversely affected by the same particles, whether PM2.5 or PM10 versions. Black soot lands on the glaciers and stays there—which then attracts the sun. The ice and snow of glaciers reflect the sun, but the black particles absorb the sun, leading to more rapid meltdown.

Black soot is a totally solvable issue. If the burning of fossil fuels in both China and India were to stop, black soot would disappear. Improved cookstoves, for instance, can greatly reduce the impact of billions of people in China and India using wood, charcoal and coal for cooking.

But neither China nor India has taken any substantial steps to even reduce the output of black carbon from coal-fired power plants—despite both nations making pledges at the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. 

On this basis alone, it is time to declare a Climate Emergency in Tibet. China has never participated in any mass demonstrations targeting the Climate Crisis, such as those sweeping Europe via school strikes for global action and Extinction Rebellion.

India has participated in such protest, with a number of NGOs involved. But a lot more needs to be done to galvanize politicians and leaders into action to solve the issue of meltdown in Tibet.

Otherwise, the planet faces a stark choice: our very survival is at stake. Across Asia, disasters like flooding and cyclones are becoming more frequent, resulting in hundreds of thousands of climate refugees on the move.

What happens in Tibet is much more than an Asian problem: it will have major impact for the entire planet. We no longer have the luxury of procrastination: the time to act is now.

This Author 

Michael Buckley is author of Meltdown in Tibet and the digital photobook Tibet, Disrupted. He has long researched environment issues in the Himalayan region.

Michael Gove is calling in the bosses of English water companies for a meeting after their efforts to protect the environment were branded “simply unacceptable”.

The Environment Agency’s (EA) annual report into the environmental performance of water companies found serious pollution incidents in England increased last year, and most firms are set to fail to meet pollution targets for 2020.

Overall water company performance has deteriorated, reversing the trend of gradual improvement in the sector since 2011, and in 2018 was simply unacceptable, the report warned last week.

Action

Mr Gove previously described the report as “damning”, insisting that “water companies have a responsibility to distribute our most precious natural resource, and must act as stewards of our environment”.

The environment secretary is now calling in the chief executives of the water companies, alongside regulators Ofwat, the Drinking Water Inspectorate, the Consumer Council for Water and the EA to meet on Thursday.

The meeting will run through water company performance and the government’s priorities for the sector, as well as progress and planned action from everyone involved, officials said.

Next generation

Mr Gove is expected to say that while there are limited positive performances from water companies and an ambition to do better, he is not seeing enough immediate improvements on environmental performance, leaks and supply and customer experience.

The meeting comes after Mr Gove gave a speech at Kew Gardens on Tuesday, which may be his last as environment secretary, in which he said the role water companies were playing in ensuring rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters were in a good condition “is simply not good enough”.

He said the government’s priorities for the water sector were to secure resilient water supplies, protect customers from potentially unaffordable bills and make sure there was a cleaner, greener country for the next generation.

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

Michael Gove is calling in the bosses of English water companies for a meeting after their efforts to protect the environment were branded “simply unacceptable”.

The Environment Agency’s (EA) annual report into the environmental performance of water companies found serious pollution incidents in England increased last year, and most firms are set to fail to meet pollution targets for 2020.

Overall water company performance has deteriorated, reversing the trend of gradual improvement in the sector since 2011, and in 2018 was simply unacceptable, the report warned last week.

Action

Mr Gove previously described the report as “damning”, insisting that “water companies have a responsibility to distribute our most precious natural resource, and must act as stewards of our environment”.

The environment secretary is now calling in the chief executives of the water companies, alongside regulators Ofwat, the Drinking Water Inspectorate, the Consumer Council for Water and the EA to meet on Thursday.

The meeting will run through water company performance and the government’s priorities for the sector, as well as progress and planned action from everyone involved, officials said.

Next generation

Mr Gove is expected to say that while there are limited positive performances from water companies and an ambition to do better, he is not seeing enough immediate improvements on environmental performance, leaks and supply and customer experience.

The meeting comes after Mr Gove gave a speech at Kew Gardens on Tuesday, which may be his last as environment secretary, in which he said the role water companies were playing in ensuring rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters were in a good condition “is simply not good enough”.

He said the government’s priorities for the water sector were to secure resilient water supplies, protect customers from potentially unaffordable bills and make sure there was a cleaner, greener country for the next generation.

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

Michael Gove is calling in the bosses of English water companies for a meeting after their efforts to protect the environment were branded “simply unacceptable”.

The Environment Agency’s (EA) annual report into the environmental performance of water companies found serious pollution incidents in England increased last year, and most firms are set to fail to meet pollution targets for 2020.

Overall water company performance has deteriorated, reversing the trend of gradual improvement in the sector since 2011, and in 2018 was simply unacceptable, the report warned last week.

Action

Mr Gove previously described the report as “damning”, insisting that “water companies have a responsibility to distribute our most precious natural resource, and must act as stewards of our environment”.

The environment secretary is now calling in the chief executives of the water companies, alongside regulators Ofwat, the Drinking Water Inspectorate, the Consumer Council for Water and the EA to meet on Thursday.

The meeting will run through water company performance and the government’s priorities for the sector, as well as progress and planned action from everyone involved, officials said.

Next generation

Mr Gove is expected to say that while there are limited positive performances from water companies and an ambition to do better, he is not seeing enough immediate improvements on environmental performance, leaks and supply and customer experience.

The meeting comes after Mr Gove gave a speech at Kew Gardens on Tuesday, which may be his last as environment secretary, in which he said the role water companies were playing in ensuring rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters were in a good condition “is simply not good enough”.

He said the government’s priorities for the water sector were to secure resilient water supplies, protect customers from potentially unaffordable bills and make sure there was a cleaner, greener country for the next generation.

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

Michael Gove is calling in the bosses of English water companies for a meeting after their efforts to protect the environment were branded “simply unacceptable”.

The Environment Agency’s (EA) annual report into the environmental performance of water companies found serious pollution incidents in England increased last year, and most firms are set to fail to meet pollution targets for 2020.

Overall water company performance has deteriorated, reversing the trend of gradual improvement in the sector since 2011, and in 2018 was simply unacceptable, the report warned last week.

Action

Mr Gove previously described the report as “damning”, insisting that “water companies have a responsibility to distribute our most precious natural resource, and must act as stewards of our environment”.

The environment secretary is now calling in the chief executives of the water companies, alongside regulators Ofwat, the Drinking Water Inspectorate, the Consumer Council for Water and the EA to meet on Thursday.

The meeting will run through water company performance and the government’s priorities for the sector, as well as progress and planned action from everyone involved, officials said.

Next generation

Mr Gove is expected to say that while there are limited positive performances from water companies and an ambition to do better, he is not seeing enough immediate improvements on environmental performance, leaks and supply and customer experience.

The meeting comes after Mr Gove gave a speech at Kew Gardens on Tuesday, which may be his last as environment secretary, in which he said the role water companies were playing in ensuring rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters were in a good condition “is simply not good enough”.

He said the government’s priorities for the water sector were to secure resilient water supplies, protect customers from potentially unaffordable bills and make sure there was a cleaner, greener country for the next generation.

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

Michael Gove is calling in the bosses of English water companies for a meeting after their efforts to protect the environment were branded “simply unacceptable”.

The Environment Agency’s (EA) annual report into the environmental performance of water companies found serious pollution incidents in England increased last year, and most firms are set to fail to meet pollution targets for 2020.

Overall water company performance has deteriorated, reversing the trend of gradual improvement in the sector since 2011, and in 2018 was simply unacceptable, the report warned last week.

Action

Mr Gove previously described the report as “damning”, insisting that “water companies have a responsibility to distribute our most precious natural resource, and must act as stewards of our environment”.

The environment secretary is now calling in the chief executives of the water companies, alongside regulators Ofwat, the Drinking Water Inspectorate, the Consumer Council for Water and the EA to meet on Thursday.

The meeting will run through water company performance and the government’s priorities for the sector, as well as progress and planned action from everyone involved, officials said.

Next generation

Mr Gove is expected to say that while there are limited positive performances from water companies and an ambition to do better, he is not seeing enough immediate improvements on environmental performance, leaks and supply and customer experience.

The meeting comes after Mr Gove gave a speech at Kew Gardens on Tuesday, which may be his last as environment secretary, in which he said the role water companies were playing in ensuring rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters were in a good condition “is simply not good enough”.

He said the government’s priorities for the water sector were to secure resilient water supplies, protect customers from potentially unaffordable bills and make sure there was a cleaner, greener country for the next generation.

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

Social media has helped scientists reveal dozens of animals, from birds to bats, are on the move in the UK or are new arrivals as a result of climate change.

At least 55 land-based and marine animals have moved to parts of the country outside their natural range or arrived in the UK in the 10 years between 2008 and 2018, a study from the Zoological Society of London has found.

They include purple herons, which have bred successfully for the first time in Kent in 2010, and European bee-eaters which bred in the UK in 2014 and 2017.

Unusual

Jersey tiger moths have spread from the Channel Islands and south coast to London, while red mullet and greater horseshoe bats have also been displaced by climate change.

The black bee fly was the only species identified as having entered the UK for the first time and become established since 2008, with the first record in Cambridgeshire in 2016 when it was found on a bug-hotel in a garden.

The study analysed UK government environment reports and 111 scientific papers to find species that were on the move as a result of rising temperatures.

Researchers also performed Twitter and Google searches for terms including “unusual species” and “first sighting” for the countries of the UK to find where people had posted images online of the animals in unusual places.

Some 10 of the 55 species were identified thanks to social media, the research published in the Journal of Applied Ecology shows.

Impacts

The research, which focused only on species that had established sustainable new populations through natural movement, said of the 55 species identified, 16 (29 percent) are known to have negative impacts on nature or people. They include crop pests such as the box tree moth and oak borer beetle.

A further 11 species (20 percent) were reported to have potentially positive impacts, such as increasing tourism or boosting fish stocks.

Dr Nathalie Pettorelli, lead author and senior research fellow at ZSL’s Institute of Zoology, said: “We are currently massively unprepared for the climate-driven movement of species that is happening right now in the UK.

“As it stands, society is not ready for the redistribution of species, as current policies and agreements are not designed for these novel species and ecological communities – particularly if those species have no perceived value to society.

“Our results suggest that many species are on the move in the UK, and that we can expect a lot of changes in the type of nature we will have around us in the coming years.

“But the lack of an integrated national platform dedicated to tracking and communicating about species displaced by climate change is currently a hindrance to mitigating those potential ecological, economic and societal associated impacts.”

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

Image: Koshy Koshy, via Flickr. 

A cross-party group of MPs will scrutinise the impacts of tourism and travel on the environment, and investigate how they can be reduced.

Tourism is one of the fastest growing economic sectors in the world, accounting for ten percent of global GDP and just under ten percent of total employment, according to the Environmental Audit Committee.

Launching the probe this morning, the committee acknowledged that, if done well, tourism can help economic growth, environmental protection and poverty alleviation.

Evidence sought

However, the growth in international and domestic travel can lead to the physical degradation of popular sites, higher rents for residents, traffic congestion and air pollution.

Protests against “overtourism” in cities such as Barcelona have highlighted the issue, the committee said.It is asking people to submit evidence on issues including how the UK tourism industry can balance encouraging tourism while protecting fragile environments; how well the UK industry manages the impact of tourism in line with the UN’s sustainable development goals; and the effectiveness of sustainable tourism practices of large tourism companies such as cruise ship and package holiday operators.

The MPs will question both how the government can support sustainable inbound tourism in the UK, and sustainable tourism to other countries.

The committee will also look at how the government can reach its net zero emissions targets through influencing sustainable travel patterns, and whether there is a role for offsets in sustainable tourism.

Click here to submit evidence to the inquiry by 15 September.  

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and chief reporter for The Ecologist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

The International Year of Indigenous Languages (IYIL) falls in a year of climate breakdown that speaks to the need to rethink our societies and cultures.

IYIL prompts us to listen to the voices of Indigenous Peoples. It encourages us to appreciate, to preserve and to respect their living cultures.

This encouragement could not be more timely: our environmental crisis demands that we abandon the social, political, economic and cultural systems that have brought us to this precipice. Let us heed the call to redefine our relationships with the non-human world.

Traditional ecological knowledge

Globalist cultures are the most removed from the natural environment: often nature and society are concepts placed at odds. Yet, it is crucial that we don’t lose sight of how culture leaves its mark on the living planet.

Indigenous Peoples tend to have strong cultural ties to the living planet and so traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is culturally ingrained. IYIL brings these cultures to the forefront of international discourse, at a time when global movements like Extinction Rebellion (XR) and School Strike for Climate (SS4C) show a will for change.

The link between cultural diversity and biodiversity has long been recognised; we must now commit to policies that relate cultural protection and environmental protection.

In the world’s biodiversity hotspots there is a confluence of ethnic and linguistic diversity (a key marker of cultural diversity). Eric Smith’s defines cultural change, in ​On the Coevolution of Cultural, Linguistic and Biological Diversity​, as “a form of co-evolution between cultural information and the social and natural environment” goes some way towards explaining this relationship.

It suggests a symbiotic relationship between culture and nature: when they are aligned, the one shifts with the other. Looking at the diversity of indigenous cultures and their lands, we can see that there is truth in this theory.

Declining diversity

Globalist culture, which champions a ‘one-size-fits-all’ ideology, is the opposite. We prefer one economic, political and social system. This preference for a singular way is reflected in our environmental governance: we create monocultures, farm only particular species of animal, and raid the Earth’s natural resources.

The way that we inflict our monoliths on the natural environment has consequences. We have reduced agrodiversity and genetic diversity in wildlife; we have destroyed countless habitats and ecosystems; we have caused a crisis of global heating. We have erased most of the world’s diversity and the result is climate breakdown and the unprecedented loss of indigenous cultures.

When we lose these cultures we lose cultural understanding of the environment and how to live within the constraints of nature. And when we lose this, we lose the knowledge and practices that enable sustainable living, and so we lose ecological integrity.

This demonstrates to us why protecting endangered cultures is so important for our planet. It also demonstrates why we need to diversify our own culture.

Supporting diversity

Here, I will share stories from some of the indigenous-led projects I have worked on with InsightShare to demonstrate the impact of cultural preservation on the natural environment.

In Nagaland in north-east India, the arrival of settlers and missionaries who privatised land and water resources caused the erasure of traditional Naga culture. Looking to revive their traditional culture, a local women-led organisation, the North East Network (NEN), chose to use participatory video (PV) to film millet farming.

This film, titled ‘Millet – Securing Lives’, was screened in local villages and surrounding communities and inspired a renaissance in millet farming. The environmental impacts of this cultural revival are significant.

The farming of millet improves agrodiversity, and biodiversity festivals showcasing millet and seed exchanges improve food security. Furthermore, farming millet does not require many external inputs -no fertilisers or pesticides, no need for irrigation, making it an economic and environmentally-friendly food source.

Territorial defence

In 2009, we co-founded a project called Conversations with the Earth, amplifying indigenous voices on climate change.

As well as raising public awareness and challenging so-called false solutions, such as carbon trading, geo-engineering, and “sustainable growth”, over 60 videos were produced by communities that shared a refreshingly alternative paradigm. Our community video network brought together groups of Indigenous Peoples from Eight countries and used a participatory approach to raise collective intelligence to address the ecological crisis.

Our Peruvian partners created a video called ‘Indigenous Peoples of the Peruvian Andes and Climate Change’ in which the participants reflected on how climate change had impacted them.

Through this process, the community of Karhui, Cusco, made the decision to reforest their sacred mountains with native trees, to start to revere once more the ancient Springs, replacing invasive Eucalptus with native medicinal plants, and singing and dancing to nurture Mother Water, reviving the annual water festival previously banned by the Evangelical Mayor. This decision, that has clear environmental benefits, was rooted in cultural beliefs and spirituality.

Similarly, our indigenous partners in North West Mexico are using PV as a tool for territorial defence. One film documents the threat posed by a water dam in Sorona to the safety of the Guarijio’s sacred lands – their pristine deciduous forests and agricultural lands.

Illegal pipeline

Another, ‘October 21st’, tells the story of Yaqui resistance to a gas pipeline in Loma de Bacum. ‘Yooram Luturia’, offers a version of the famous Yaqui oath, which reminds each member of the tribe to recall their commitment to protecting the environment and territory.

These films indicate the importance of the natural environment to indigenous culture in Mexico. The creation of sacred natural sites and the community commitment to protecting them serve to remind us all that respect for the living planet needs to be re-incorporated into our own culture.

Ten years on, these activists have established local video collectives, which remain connected and work together to articulate a collective vision for a Living Cultures movement. In Mexico, La Marabunta Filmadora video collective is fighting a campaign against an illegal gas pipeline that lies across their lands, and now addressing illegal logging through producing short social media videos.

In Tanzania, Oltoilo Le Maa is fighting land-rights violations, including defending traditional grazing lands from a private hunting safari, as well as challenge the growing number of lands being demarcated by the government to be sold off into private hands.

In Nagaland, NEN is spreading millet revival to more communities and educating youth in the traditional agroecological farming approaches once practised by their ancestors. Each video team offers a platform for indigenous voices to be heard. Initially the films are screened locally; much like holding up a mirror.

Living planet

Community screenings create safe spaces to reflect back to the wider community some of today’s challenges and help surface a diversity of responses, supporting collaborative innovation. Some videos may be targeted at governments and other external audiences to persuade the other stakeholders to protect their lifeways and their lands.

Policies that operate at a grass-roots level have the highest potential for success. Self-governance, land rights and political empowerment enable indigenous communities to keep their cultural identities and their land, which in turn allows them to play a central role in the conservation and management of their territories.

Governments across the planet must recognise that 80 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity is found in Indigenous lands. What better way to mitigate against climate change than to urgently protect these territories of life, to support the traditional custodians of biocultural diversity?

Participation is the engine for change. Without participation there exists no active citizenship, no engagement, no agency and no access to decision-making. Participation decolonises top-down systems and opens up a myriad of communication between groups of people.

Movements like XR and SS4C need to align with emerging indigenous-led movements like the Pan-African Living Cultures Alliance (PALCA) to rethink our cultures and societies and to redefine our interaction with the living planet.

We must invite Indigenous Peoples to participate in the conversations that they should be leading; helping shift the balance away from separation and individualism to connection and collaboration.

This Author 

Nick Lunch is a director and co-founder of InsightShare.

A recent slew of articles have hit international media in the wake of Botswana’s decision to lift its moratorium on trophy hunting.

Typically, the argument is that Botswana now has too many elephants, which have exceeded the country’s carrying capacity. Local communities that depended on hunting revenue and bushmeat now go without, reducing tolerance for conflict with crop-raiding elephants and other wildlife.

Moreover, trophy hunting only targets ‘surplus bulls’, so there’s nothing to worry about, and only a maximum of 400 will be killed in any given year. Oh, and don’t tell us what to do, you western armchair critics. 

The truth does not support any of these premises. 

Elephant poaching

Botswana, as is now clearly documented in the peer-reviewed literature, has an elephant poaching problem, not an overpopulation problem.

Between 2014 and 2018, the population has remained roughly stable at around 130,000 elephants. According to the latest continent-wide survey, the African savannah elephant population is estimated at 374,982 elephants, excluding South Sudan and Central African Republic.

Rowan Martin, veteran wildlife manager, quotes a figure of 541,684 elephants from the 2016 African Elephant Status Report (AESR). Of the remaining elephants, Botswana is home to the vast majority. 

Martin is one of the many voices in favour of Botswana’s decision to lift the trophy hunting moratorium. He asserts that the suspicions that the Botswana government is doing so primarily to secure the rural vote in the upcoming October elections are vacuous.

However, it is clear that elephants are being reduced to a political football, caught between the views of its current president and his predecessor. It is a vote-catcher that could go horribly wrong. Martin has chosen to label arguments against elephant trophy hunting as ‘mud-slinging’ that insinuates that ‘native Africans’ can’t manage their own natural resources. This is a pity, as it detracts from the substance of the debate. 

There are at least five myths that inform the rationale for reintroducing hunting. Rowan Martin and his followers believe that these are no myths. A brief response to each of Martin’s objections, in light of new research about elephant behaviour, follows:  

Population

Myth: Botswana’s elephant population is exploding

Botswana’s elephant population numbered roughly 62,998 in 1995. Martin argues that the most accurate figure for a decade prior to that is between 30,000 and 40,000 elephants. The African Elephant Status Report (AESR) to which he refers puts the figure at 50,000 in 1990.

Martin is also of the view that the current figure of 160,000 quoted at the KAZA conference is accurate. But the AESR to which Martin himself referred puts the 2006 figure at 154,658, notes that it’s disputed, and estimates the 2015 figure at 131,626.  

Martin takes issue with the widely accepted view that the Botswana population has been roughly stable between 2014 and 2018. It has clearly fallen since 2006, so it remains unclear why he thinks that Botswana’s ‘elephant populations are growing, not stable’.

It is also not clear what Martin means by the phrase that the ‘Botswana population is pumping out emigrants.’ Elephants are migrating into Botswana from elsewhere to escape hunting and poaching, hardly expelling them. The latest survey by Schlossberg, Chase and Landen (2018) has been lauded as one of the most rigorous scientific undertakings in this field, and it shows stable numbers at best alongside a growing poaching crisis.

The growing populations are humans and cattle, not elephants. Outside protected areas, desertification caused by cattle over-grazing is a problem that too often gets ignored in this conversation. The cattle industry is ecologically and economically costly but politically powerful. Water is also increasingly scarce, which will exacerbate human and elephant conflict. Hunting will not solve this problem; appropriate land use planning will.  

Carrying capacity

Myth: Botswana’s elephants have exceeded the ‘carrying capacity’ of the landscape

Martin agrees with the oft-quoted figure of a carrying capacity of 54,000 elephants in Botswana. That equates to about one elephant for every three kilometres squared. This concept remains arbitrary and lacks relevance for large, unfenced wilderness landscapes.

But Martin continues to insist that these landscapes are akin to farms that must be managed to ensure as little variation as possible. Him and Ron Thomson have both lamented the loss of large canopy trees as a result of elephant ‘over-population’. But they haven’t responded to the science that shows the importance of inter-seasonal variation; elephants’ roles as ecosystem engineers; and the fact that there is no benchmark as to what a landscape should look like. 

Martin dismisses the 24 authors of the above-linked Ambio article as ‘pseudo-scientists’. His criteria for determining what constitutes ‘pseudo-science’ is anything that contradicts his own experience or cited literature.

He similarly betrays himself when he argues that man ‘does not need “scientific criteria” in his aesthetic quest as long as he is practising adaptive management.’ The literature he cites in support of this is work produced by himself and Marshall Murphree.  

Trophy standard

Myth: Hunting will solve the elephant population ‘explosion’

Martin argues that this myth is redundant because we know that trophy hunting only eliminates a small number of bull elephants each year.

But this misses the fact that the myth is one of the pretexts on which the re-introduction of trophy hunting has been rationalised. It also misses the deeper point that trophy hunting is likely to lead to population collapse, especially if it annihilates older bulls. 

A report by Martin, Craig and Peake shows a high and consistent ‘trophy standard’ in the 15 years leading up to 2010, but Martin’s appeal to it amounts to special pleading as there is no guarantee that such a standard will be maintained from 2019 onwards, especially given the notoriety of corruption in the industry. Nor does it mean that a high ‘trophy standard’ reflects good ecological management.

The quota numbers for some areas were a thumb-suck based on no science at all. But the primary reason why hunting will fail is that there are very few ‘trophy’ tuskers remaining – genetic depletion is real and scientifically documented. Martin ignores the figures about how few trophy bulls over the age of 35 are left in Botswana. 

Furthermore, the evidence is now unequivocal that: ‘Male elephants increased their energetic allocation into reproduction with age as the probability of reproductive success increases. Given that older male elephants tend to be both the target of legal trophy hunting and illegal poaching, man-made interference could drive fundamental changes in elephant reproductive tactics.’ 

The reproductive success of a male elephant increases with age – there is no such thing as a ‘surplus’ bull that can be extracted as a ‘trophy’. Therefore, a combination of poaching and trophy hunting may well lead to population collapse or at least to undesirable lasting population changes. 

Devolution of rights

Myth: Hunting will solve human and elephant conflict

Conservationists should generally be fully in favour of devolution of rights to local communities that are on the frontlines of conservation. Martin is right that status conferred is more important than benefits derived.

He contradicts this point by arguing that trophy hunting is an essential component of the system because of the added value it brings to communities. Many communities do not want to return to hunting, and no credible NGO working in Botswana thinks that a return to trophy hunting is wise.

Martin also asserts that the Botswana government called for tenders in previous hunting concessions (mostly in the Central Conservation Areas) but that no one wanted them. Had those concessions been granted, poaching would have been less likely to take root – presence counts for a lot in counter-poaching. 

Martin fails to mention, however, that a large part of the reason no investor wanted those concessions is that the Botswana Tourism Organisation insisted that the land use be exclusively photographic and demanded substantial signature bonuses. But blindly insisting on photographic lodges in geographically unamenable areas lacks wisdom.

Self-drive tourism and mobile camps, brilliant options, were precluded as a use option even though it was frequently promoted in those concessions’ management plans. To argue that the hunters were right, after all, does not follow. 

Poaching

Myth: Hunting moratorium led to more poaching

Botswana’s poaching problem only started to escalate just before 2017, three years after the hunting ban was imposed. Martin argues that the AESR puts ‘the inception of severe illegal hunting at around 2006.’

It’s not clear whether he means for Botswana or for the whole African population. But either way, that would clearly destroy the argument that hunting presence is necessary to ameliorate poaching. Hunting was at its peak in 2006.

Moreover, hunting presence in places like the Selous hardly countered poaching. To argue that hunters could do nothing about politically protected poaching gangs is an all-too-easy get-out-of-jail-free card. 

Where Martin is right is that communities should be far more involved in land-use planning and rights devolution needs to be a priority. None of this means, however, that western trophy hunting is a sensible policy choice, especially given that the practice is morally abominable and ecologically unsustainable. 

This Author 

Ross Harvey studied a B.Com in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where he also completed an M.Phil in Public Policy. At the end of 2018, he submitted his PhD in Economics, also at UCT. Ross is currently a freelance independent economist who works with The Conservation Action Trust.

Follow him on Twitter: @Harvross