January 31st, 2018. In what is being hailed internationally as a victory for elephant conservation, Hong Kong lawmakers have voted overwhelmingly to close the island’s domestic ivory market.
On Wednesday, the government announced that trade in the “white gold” will be phased out completely by 2021, accompanied by harsher penalties for offenders: $1.3 million or 10 years in prison, significant increases from the previous punishments ($650,000 or 2 years in prison).
The Hong Kong decision comes one month after the closure of China’s domestic ivory market, which proceeded in accordance with a 2015 joint announcement by Chinese President Xi Jinping and then-US President Barack Obama. Prior to the closure, China was regarded as the world’s largest consumer of ivory, with its demand for ivory chopsticks, trinkets and ornaments linked to the deaths of some 30,000 African elephants every year.
Conservation groups have long criticized the flimsy regulation of Hong Kong’s ivory market. A 2015 report by advocacy group WildAid found that ivory traders and smugglers take advantage of a corrupt and “loophole riddled system” to launder poached ivory into the supply stream. Studies have calculated that the city-state’s legal ivory stockpiles should have been exhausted in 2004, but are instead being supplemented by smuggled ivory and fueling Africa’s ongoing poaching crisis.
While the closing of domestic ivory markets in China and Hong Kong are significant achievements, some worry that the illegal trade will simply move elsewhere. Nearby Laos is home to the infamous Golden Triangle region, where trade in endangered species flourishes openly alongside human trafficking, prostitution, drug sales and other illicit activities. Earlier this week, the US Treasury Department placed sanctions on a Hong Kong-based syndicate operating in the Golden Triangle in a move to “disrupt the financial infrastructure of transnational criminal organizations”.
The effect of shifting markets on the illegal ivory trade remains to be seen. But with nearly half of Africa’s elephant populations in decline, Hong Kong’s decision sends a strong message that was echoed on the signs held by protesters on the day of the vote: “Only elephants should own ivory”.
Little Blue Dot Press 