Botswana has reinstated trophy hunting after a 5-year moratorium on the practice.

In the wake of evidently declining wildlife numbers, former president Ian Khama imposed the ban in early 2014. Elephant numbers had plummeted by 15% in the preceding decade. The hunting industry had been granted a total quota of between 420 and 800 elephants a year during that time. Evidence of abuse was prolific and communities were not benefiting from the fees that hunters were paying.

Over the past five years Botswana has earned a reputation as the continent’s last elephant haven. It harbours just over a third of Africa’s remaining savanna elephants.

Khama’s successor, Mokgweetsi Masisi, has been in the job for just over a year. He’s promoted a conservation doctrine that is diametrically opposed to Khama’s.

Masisi recently hosted a conference in Kasane that brought together heads of state and environment ministers from Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Its pretext was to formulate a common vision for managing southern Africa’s elephants under the banner of the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA). But the conference was used to drum up support for Botswana’s intended reversion to elephant hunting.

Tourism and Environment Minister, Kitso Mokaila, claimed that the country has too many elephants. This “overpopulation” narrative has also fuelled the idea that hunting – and even culling – will reduce growing human and elephant conflict.

But many believe that elephants have been reduced to a political football in Masisi’s election campaign to curry favour with rural communities who feel aggrieved over the hunting ban. The elections will be held in October this year.

A cabinet sub-committee report produced earlier this year recommended that the hunting ban be lifted. It therefore comes as no surprise that Masisi has done so.

At the conference, he gave elephant footstools to his fellow heads of state, a symbol of support for “consumptive use”. This is a conservation doctrine that endorses the exploitation of wildlife in the form of either trophy hunting or trade in derivative parts such as ivory.

A turn for the worst

The narrative that Botswana’s elephant population is exploding and has exceeded the country’s carrying capacity is repeatedly used to rationalise trophy hunting and the ivory trade. Mokaila claimed, for instance, that Botswana’s elephant population was at 160 000, nearly three times the “carrying capacity” of 54 000.

But a scientific aerial survey of northern Botswana – where the country’s elephants are concentrated – conducted in 2018 disputes this. The survey estimated a national population of 126 114, indicating stability since 2014. It also revealed a sharp increase in poaching. The survey report noted:

These results suggest there is a significant elephant-poaching problem in northern Botswana that has likely been going on for over a year.

The survey also found that nearly all carcasses suspected of being poached were bulls. Bulls are targeted for their large tusks. This suggests that Botswana is fast becoming a poaching hotspot for the growing demand for illicit ivory in East Asia.

If the country’s not careful, poaching will take root in the same way it has in Tanzania and Mozambique over the last decade.

The numbers

Proponents argue that hunting “surplus” bull elephants reins in elephant numbers and provides direct jobs (and bushmeat) to local communities who live in the daily reality of growing human and wildlife conflict.

Arguments in favour of hunting invariably appeal to the obsolete idea of “carrying capacity” – that a landscape can only withstand the impact of a certain maximum number of elephants. But conservation scientists aren’t convinced that this applies in large, unfenced and highly variable ecosystems such as Botswana’s. Arguing, for instance, that an area can only sustain 0.4 elephants per square kilometres is arbitrary.

Adult bulls are also not surplus to herd requirements; they only breed successfully beyond the age of 35 and sire most of their young after 40. Hunting of a few select trophy males hardly contributes to population control. It is similarly unlikely to mitigate human and elephant conflict as it forces elephants to concentrate in smaller areas, making them more aggressive.

Trophy hunting

Either way, trophy hunting is in decline and its conservation efficacy is increasingly being questioned. Nonetheless, Masisi appears to have bought the narrative that well governed hunting is the silver bullet to conservation.

But hunting is hardly ever well governed and unethical players undermine the rationale behind a quota system. In an open system, incentives to over exploit one’s hunting quota are stronger than incentives to stick to the rules. This tends to result in a tragedy of the commons – over-exploitation of natural resources beyond the ecosystem’s maximum sustainable yield.

On top of this, the voices of communities benefiting from photographic tourism have not yet been heard. Photographic safaris are fundamentally more sustainable than trophy hunting. In 2018, tourism (mostly photographic and with no hunting) supported 84 000 jobs. By contrast, at its peak in 2009, hunting only supported 1000 jobs.

In conclusion

Botswana is at risk of losing its sterling conservation reputation. Support for trophy hunting and the ivory trade is regressive and may damage its tourism reputation.

For a country that has been overly dependent on diamond rents, which are now in decline, Botswana cannot afford policy decisions that undermine its second largest economic sector.

Ross Harvey, Independent Economist; PhD Candidate, University of Cape Town

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Kenya’s Penal Code, which criminalises same-sex activity, will remain intact following a High Court ruling which rejected a petition calling for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the country.

LGBT activists in Kenya were hopeful that their country would join an emerging trend in Africa. Earlier this year, Angola decriminalised homosexuality while Mozambique did so in 2015. In June, the Botswana High Court will hand down its verdict in a decriminalisation case that has the public support of the country’s president.

The long-anticipated ruling in Kenya had drawn a large crowd to the Milimani High Court in Nairobi, with hundreds of people, mostly members of the local LGBT community and their allies, queuing to get in to the packed court room. They were greatly disappointed by the negative ruling, while other Kenyans on Twitter expressed their excitement that the Court had decided to protect “morality”.

The unanimous decision of the three-judge bench as read out by Judge Charles Mwita was that:

the impugned provisions of the Penal Code are not vague and disclose an offence. The petitioners have failed to prove that the provisions are discriminatory. There is no evidence to show that the petitioners were discriminated and their rights violated as they sought healthcare.

The ruling will be widely seen as a major setback in the struggle for the rights of sexual minorities in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa.

Petition

The Nairobi ruling followed two petitions filed in 2016 by three Kenyan LGBT organisations: the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya and Nyanza, Rift Valley and Western Kenya Network. The petitions asked the court to declare sections of the Penal Code unconstitutional.

The Kenyan Penal Code, which dates back to the British colonial period, holds liable to imprisonment any person involved in “unnatural offences” or “carnal knowledge against the order of nature” (up to 14 years), and any males involved in “indecent practices” (up to five years).

Read more: Africa has lost Binyavanga Wainaina. But his spirit will continue to inspire

A ruling on the petitions was supposed to be issued in February 2019, but was postponed at the last minute. In the meantime, Kenyan LGBT activists and their allies mounted a strong campaign using the hashtag #Repeal162 to mobilise support.

The key argument of the petition was that sections of the Penal Code violated rights enshrined in the Kenyan Constitution. These included the right to privacy, freedom of expression, human dignity, the right to health, and the right to protection against discrimination.

The constitution

The Constitution, adopted in 2010 following a referendum, has been widely recognised for being progressive. For example, it has a robust Bill of Rights that guarantees the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all Kenyans.

Conservative sections of Kenyan society are uncomfortable with some of the clauses. During the referendum on the constitution some members of the clergy as well as some politicians – including the current Deputy President William Ruto – called on citizens to vote against it. One of their arguments was that the Constitution would lead to the legalisation of homosexuality.

The fact that 67% of Kenyans came out in support of the new constitution suggests that they had different concerns.

There’s no doubt that the Constitution has emboldened LGBT activists in Kenya. As the main petitioner Eric Gitari points out, although the Constitution does not explicitly mention matters of sexual orientation or gender identity,

it nonetheless possessed golden threads of equality, dignity and freedom.

Progressive developments

In the past few years, the courts have delivered a number of legal successes. In 2014 the High Court ruled that a transgender organisation should be allowed to register as an NGO. The organisation had been denied to register three times by the relevant government agency, on the basis that it would be “furthering criminality and immoral affairs”. The following year, a similar ruling was made for a gay and lesbian organisation.

Thus the right to freedom of association was effectively applied to LGBT groups. Also, the right to protection against discrimination was applied to sexual orientation and gender identity.

And last year the court of appeal in Kenya’s second largest city, Mombasa, ruled that forced anal examination of people accused of same-sex activity is unconstitutional as it violates the right to privacy.

Setback

To the great disappointment and frustration of Gitari and his fellow activists, the High Court in this high profile case has not ruled in their favour. The judges, in a rather conservative interpretation of the Constitution, concluded that the current Penal Code does not discriminate against any particular group (such as LGBT people), because it applies to all citizens (“any person”) involved in same-sex practices, regardless of their sexual orientation.

However, the Court did grant the petitioners the right to appeal to the decision, and it is very likely they will make use of that opportunity. Kenyan LGBT activists have shown great resilience, and the world will keep watching as their struggle continues.

Adriaan van Klinken, Associate Professor of Religion and African Studies, University of Leeds

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.