The Sheer Awesomeness of Adventure Tourism

Yes, elephants are - and should be - a commodity. Photograph by Eric Isselee.Several years ago, before I traveled across the Pacific Ocean to explore Japan, I considered becoming an economics professor, wrote an article on space tourism which appeared in the Duke Journal of Economics, applied for a Fulbright Grant to study economics in the Tanzanian bush, was rejected, and realized a future as an economics professor wasn't meant to be.  But in the process I did almost a year's worth of research into the various forms of tourism and the capacity of tourism revenues to provide economic incentives for conservation in places like East Africa.  I'm still convinced that my project would have established tourism as both an environmental panacea and the key to East African development.  I still dream of being able to complete this research someday.

Accordingly, when I came across Jeffrey Goldberg's recent New Yorker article, The Hunted, I was riveted, overwhelmed with nostalgia, and driven to furious anger.  The article tells the story of Mark and Delia Owens, two hippie conservationist assholes who traveled to the remotest of remote Africa convinced their compassion towards elephants warranted homesteading on tribal lands, shameless self-promotion, vigilanteism, lying to the public about their activities in Africa in a Machiavellian fashion, and eventually the (alleged) murder of an (alleged) poacher, although that part's not very clear.  Goldberg writes:

I noted to (Delia) that Mark wrote in a letter to P. J. Fouche that he knew of two poachers who had been killed by his scouts. It was then that she asked me to leave the property. “Why don’t you understand that we’re good people?” she asked. “We were just trying to help.”...

...the impression that Mark and Delia Owens leave—in their writings and speeches, in the ABC documentary, and on those who have observed them closely—is that they believed so fervently in the righteousness of their cause that they were able to dismiss all criticism.

And that's the problem.  As I've written before, I have a major problem with activists trying to impose their own sense of righteousness on others who don't share that sense, even if their goals are noble.  I believe this is an Achilles Heel of the conservation movement that could very well jeopardize the movement's goals: like teenagers, thoughtful, creative people don't respond well to being told what to believe.  

Having an ideological litmus test for participation in conservation endeavors is counterproductive and tragic.  We've seen it before with conservationists opposed to taxation of pollution on ideological grounds, and we're continuing to see it with climate change, where idiotic deontologists stall the debate and perpetuate the status quo as much as or more than the more radical deniers and corporate lobbyists.

Indeed, as Joe discussed in a previous post, liberal denial of economic realities is a fatal flaw for an otherwise admirable program:  

all too often liberal skepticism of market outcomes leads some liberals to undermine their own policy goals and end up on the factually wrong side of positions.

The scientific and economic consensus generally suggests that if incentives are properly structured, common goals can be met without coercion.  Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize last year for her empirical work on this; from Ostrom's research, in cases where only entitled parties have a say, rules are clear and tailored to particular communities, there are effective mechanisms for conflict-resolution, and generally a federalist structure prevails, communities develop sustainable resource-management schemes.  

This is why I believed widespread adventure tourism would be a good solution for East Africa's economic and conservation problems, and why I still do.  If governments and communities put structures in place such as the economic value of an elephant as an object to attract tourists outweighs the economic value of an elephant as a source of ivory (or food), elephants would be protected.  (On the other hand, if the Endangered Species Act structures incentives such that if I comply and report the California Condors nesting on my farmland my land will be seized by the government, I have an incentive to kill the condors and destroy the evidence.)  Trying to convince citizens of the developing world struggling to subsist that killing elephants to sell their ivory is morally wrong is a move destined to fail.

Economics is a reality that do-gooders of all stripes must accept.  Conservationists must work within the province of economics to meet their goals in a consequentialist fashion.  People are rational and self-interested, even if that rationality is a different form of rationality than ours.  The key to environmental progress is structuring incentives so that preservation coincides with this human nature.