Property rights

In the late 1980s there were two campaigns to save African elephants. One banned international trade in ivory. The other established common property rights to elephants for local communities. Has either campaign saved the elephants? To answer this question, we constructed and solved two models, a biomass model and an age structured model. We conclude that in countries which successfully establish property rights, local communities will conserve elephants.

Today, there is increasing recognition that traditional and indigenous knowledge systems can provide alternative strategies for the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources, a realisation that is strongly reflected in the Convention on biological diversity. However, there is a fear that this interest in traditional knowledge systems will lead to the basic human, cultural and scientific rights of indigenous people being sidelined, something the CBD fails to address adequately.