Kenya’s burning of its elephant ivory is the example to follow

The message in destroying 100 tons with a value of $110m is that the trade has no future, say Chris Alden and Ross Harvey

KENYA has burned its stockpile of elephant ivory. That’s 100 metric tons of ‘white gold’, both illegally harvested (confiscated from poachers or traders) and naturally accruing (from natural mortality), valued at €110m (based on the price of $1,100 per kilogram in China, where the majority of the world’s ivory is consumed or stockpiled).

To most economists, destroying something of so much value is anathema. But there are good reasons for a country — even one as poor as Kenya — to surrender its ivory wealth to the flames. Stockpile destruction fortifies the credibility of demand-reduction campaigns in East Asia, without which the poaching problem will never be solved. Demand reduction aims to weaken the market for the product by changing consumer tastes. As prices drop, so does the incentive for poachers to kill elephants.