Duffy applied the “Page 99 Test” to her latest book, Security and Conservation: The Politics of the Illegal Wildlife Trade, and reported the following:
On page 99 of the book I examine the high profile story around a 2012 Elephant Action League report on the alleged links between Al Shabaab and the ivory trade. For a short period the idea of ivory as the ‘white gold of jihad’ was popularised through global media and repeated by donors, philanthropists, governments and conservation NGOs. However, as I discuss on page 99, the evidence for Al Shabaab’s involvement in the ivory trade from East Africa did not stack up, and was questioned by academics, journalists and a UNEP/INTERPOL report, amongst others. In the end, the Elephant Action League (now Earth League International) eventually accepted the claim was an overstatement, but stopped short of stating that it was inaccurate. The ivory-Al-Shabaab story is a very good indicator of what the book is actually about: explaining the causes and consequences of the shift towards security-oriented approaches in conservation, especially in tackling the illegal wildlife trade. The idea that the illegal wildlife trade funds international terrorism has had remarkable sticking power. Poaching and trafficking are now commonly reported as sources of funding for armed groups like Boko Haram and Janjaweed - but with very little publicly available evidence. This is linked in with the ways that the illegal wildlife trade has been rebranded as wildlife crime, as a form of serious and organised crime which constitutes a global security threat. My book examines the effects of this. I trace the expansion of funding available from donors and philanthropists, amongst others; there is now a huge imbalance in money made available for strategies that draw on security sector approaches, compared with strategies to create sustainable livelihoods and demand reduction. I also investigate the impact of this in conservation practice, supporting and extending more forceful and violent responses, often against some of the most marginalised and vulnerable communities in the world. The growth in funding to tackle illegal wildlife trade has allowed the expansion of enhanced forms of law enforcement and militarisation, including the use of counter insurgency techniques, development of surveillance networks, and contracting in Private Military Companies to train anti poaching units. This leads to greater forms of exclusion, violence and human rights abuses. But none of this tackles the underlying drivers of illegal wildlife trade and biodiversity losses - demand for wildlife products is primarily driven by consumers in the wealthy world. Militarising conservation misses this entirely.Learn more about Security and Conservation at the Yale University Press website.
--Marshal Zeringue
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