Ivory: power and poaching in Africa

Abstract

Keith Somerville's Ivory tackles the emotive topic of elephant poaching in sub-Saharan Africa with a journalistic rigour. The book presents readers with clear-eyed analysis, examining and debunking the powerful western narratives permeating the history of the ivory trade and the contemporary conservation debate. Somerville brings together a comprehensive array of sources to untangle the politics at the heart of the ivory trade, showing how corruption, conflict and crime have perpetuated it and undermined attempts to preserve the African elephant, including the 1989 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) ivory trade ban. Somerville highlights a number of caveats on the data for readers to bear in mind. Accurately estimating elephant numbers in Africa is a challenge, particularly as data presented by different actors, including conservation groups and NGOs, elephant specialists, governments, think-tanks and trade experts all carry their own biases and policy motivations. The significance of Ivory is that Somerville juxtaposes these different approaches to cut through vested interests, imparting readers with the evidence with which to assess the conservation debate themselves.