All trade in ivory must be stopped to protect elephants
Over a 50-year period, Africa’s savanna elephant population declined by 70 percent, and forest elephants by 90 percent. Elephants continue to face many threats to their survival in the wild, including climate change, habitat destruction, human-wildlife conflict, and poaching for their ivory tusks to supply the trade in ivory. The demand for ivory is what drives elephant poaching – and all ivory markets fuel that demand in one way or another. While addressing the illegal trade in ivory is critical, closing all ivory markets, including legal markets, supports the global conservation and protection of elephants.
While the international commercial trade in ivory is banned and many countries have taken steps to close their markets, Japan is the leading outlier, with the largest remaining legal ivory market. Legal ivory markets, like Japan’s, stimulate demand for ivory products, confuse consumers and weaken demand reduction efforts, and make enforcement efforts difficult.
To protect elephants from the trade in ivory, Japan must take steps to close its domestic ivory market for good. Japan’s ivory market closure would send a strong signal to the international community that there is no future for the global trade in ivory.
While the international commercial trade in ivory was banned in 1989 under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), countries were allowed to maintain legal domestic markets for ivory. In 2016, Parties to CITES agreed by consensus to a resolution that urged all countries with legal markets that contribute to poaching or illegal trade to close them.
While Japan claims the trade in ivory is “prohibited in principle,” in fact, Japan essentially allows any sale of pre-convention ivory (ivory imported before the 1989 CITES ban), except for unregistered whole tusks, as well as ivory purchased in two CITES-approved international sales. Japan’s legal framework for the control of the trade in ivory is designed and built to regulate and facilitate commercial ivory trade and to support ivory traders.
Today, there are almost 4,500 traders registered with the government to sell ivory, including retailers, wholesalers, and manufacturers. When the registration program was first initiated In 2018, there were 13,200 traders registered. How much ivory are they actually selling to the Japanese public?
In lieu of government action to close the ivory market, many e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retailers have ceased selling ivory products, including Rakuten, Yahoo! Japan, Mercari Inc., Ito Yokado, and AEON, as well as other smaller retailers. For many, the decision was made in line with global momentum and to reduce the risk that ivory purchased on their platforms would be illegally exported.
Japan reports to have a 250+ tonne, privately held ivory stockpile available for purchase on its domestic market, which includes whole tusks that are registered with the government and cut pieces that are reported from the registered ivory businesses to the government. This stockpile does not include unregistered whole tusks, and any and every cut piece in private possession by citizens throughout Japan. Who is actually buying all this ivory? A recent survey indicates the general public isn’t interested.
Elephant Ivory vs. Japan: A Timeline