Wildlife exploitation - Essay Example

Wildlife exploitation and conservation consists of different costs and benefits, which should all be considered so as to achieve a most favorable outcome. For this to take place, it is imperative to come up with appropriate economic incentives and instruments. Management of wildlife poses a specific challenge to the global community generally since wildlife has an impact not only on individuals residing in areas where there is wildlife, but also on communities located some distances away. Thus a divergence exists between what is best from an individual, regional and community perspective and also what is best from a country’s or global society’s perspective. To be able to address this kind of divergence, various economic methods or devices can be used. The phrase “economic instrument” is utilized to make a description of any method/device that the government uses to accomplish a result contrary to (other than) the one that takes place in the absence of any intervention from the government. The government can employ three categories of economic instruments available to it. The first one is common norms and values (moral suasion in economic terms or threats), the second one is control and command and the third one is market incentives, also known as economic incentives (EIs). Moral suasion is the ability of the state to persuade economic agents (firms or individuals) to behave in a fashion which is desirable socially. Instruments (product labeling/certification by an industry association) that are voluntary, most likely accompanied by threats, are one part; however there also exist chances to “persuade” residents to, protect wildlife habitat, report poachers and so forth. Finally the market or economic incentives and control (regulation) and command are widely utilized together, mostly out of necessity. The aim of this paper is to analyse the extent of economic incentives in wildlife conservation. Some of the incentives that can be provided to conserve marine biodiversity include encouraging local people in their limited and managed development. Thus the best and most successful policies that encourage conservation of wildlife and marine biodiversity have been those that encourage the locals’ limited and managed development. This implies that allowing the local communities to make restricted use of wildlife encourages them to view the surrounding wildlife as an asset for development rather than a threat. Allowing utilization of restricted reserve lands along riverside and coastal regions allows the local people to make use of the available land while at the same affording other uses by wildlife. Afterall,in any given time, it is always important for the benefits accruing from wildlife conservation to trickle down and be distributed amongst the whole community. This takes the form of sharing tourism incomes from the reserve with the local community and maintaining a specific share of the available jobs in the reserve for the local community. Such policies therefore act as an encouragement for the locals who view the designation of the reserve for wildlife purposes as a particular kind of local development policy for their benefit and not as a constraint on their development of the reserved lands (Arriagada, Perrings, 2011). The other important incentive that can really assist in marine biodiversity conservation is the use of taxes/charges and tradable quota or rights and subsidies. This means that harvesters are subsidized to lower their harvest rate. Assuming that such arrangements can work, subsidies may work in the sense that they may lead to lowering of optimal harvesting levels of particular harvesters. A big potential problem however exists with subsidies especially when the property rights to the resource are imperfect since they can encourage a massive entry into the harvesting sector which the authorities aim to control. This is to say that even though harvesting per harvester reduces; the number of harvesters will most likely shoot up, compromising the objectives of conservation. Apart from suffering excess harvesting, many marine wildlife species are threatened by habitat conversion. Subsidies can therefore be a very effective, equitable and efficient tool to curb habitat conversion. The other major incentive that can aid in conservation of marine biodiversity include establishment of secure property or use rights. This has been effectively used in Southern Africa where government officials started instituting benefit-sharing programs. These programs have allowed the local community to come up with community tourist related facilities inside the parks (Natal’s Good Neighbor Policy) and at other times the community is given a share in the value of wildlife that wanders onto their neighboring lands. The other incentives include economic incentives, thus the market allocates resources with the role of government restricted to provision of legal and institutional framework, rather than interfering with the way the business is conducted. Economic or market incentives consist of basically of taxes or charges and tradable rights. Thus it has been therefore demonstrated that extensive cost savings may occur in the context of commercial management of fisheries and control of pollution (Weninger, Waters, 2003).However it is important to realize that commercial polluting firms (producing various goods)and fishers may consist of a much more diversified set of actors than just those in the business of harvesting specific species in a country that is developing. Public goods are said to be impure if they are either partially excludable or partially rival-the most common form of are local public goods, specifically the local common pool of resources analyzed by Ostrom. Most often, it is difficult for any single state to provide such goods by its own self. International public good supply is dependent on either international coordination or mostly international cooperation (Anand, 2004). There are several externalities associated with public goods such as a clean environment, thus, most public goods are recognized as having benefits which cannot be easily confined to one “buyer” (or set of “buyers”).Yet the moment they are provided several people can enjoy them for free. Without a mechanism for collective action, these goods will mostly be underprovided. Thus several crises dominating the international policy agenda presently mirror the under provision of global public goods. Globalization has made externalities be borne by people in other nations. Thus issues that were formerly local are now global due to greater interconnectedness of the earth. Kaul et al. (2003b) three main ideas have been suggested for rethinking underpinning the public goods theory. Thus properties of non-rivalry in consumption and non-excludability of current benefits do not automatically determine whether a good is private or public, even though it is crucial to differentiate between a good’s having the potential of being public,(its having a non-rival and non-excludable properties) and also its being de facto public(non-exclusive and available for all to consume).Another externality is that public goods do not need to be provided for by the country, there are other several factors that can contribute their provision. The other externality is that public goods are no longer in scope nationally, having assumed cross-border dimensions .Many have therefore become global and need international cooperation to be sufficiently provided. Two common types of public good supply technologies are ‘best shot’, and ‘weakest link’ technologies. For ‘best shot’ public goods ,the benefit to all countries is determined by the most effective provider, for instance ,the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are funded by the U.S.A, but makes sure there is provision of information on infectious diseases to all countries. On the other hand, ‘weakest link ‘public goods, benefits to all countries are limited to the benefits offered by the least effective provider. The best example of this is the control of infectious diseases. For instance HIV and tuberculosis, the level of protection is available to all countries is only as good as the control of the disease exercised in the poorest, most densely populated, and least well-coordinated country. There are several positive incentives that can come about due to instruments in the forestry sector which includes stumpage of value based forest revenues systems, financial and material incentives, long term forestry concessions, trade liberalization, forest certification and the promotion of markets for non-timber forest products. The cost and benefits associated with several human activities spill over jurisdictional boundaries, thereby generating externalities. Among payment schemes to internalize the external benefits of maintaining intact forests ,Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation(REDD) is an effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and invest low-carbon paths to sustainable development(Swanson,Cornelis,2003). References Arriagada Rodrigo, Perrings Charles. "Paying for international Environmental Public Goods." AMBIO (2011): 798-806. Swanson Timothy, Cornelis van Kooten,Bulte H.Erwin. Economic Incentives Wildlife Conservation. New York: London University Press, 2003. . Read More