Ban on the Import of Elephant Trophies into the USA from Tanzania and Zimbabwe Comment on the Framework for the Decision

Regulation of use is an essential component for sustainability in use. Prevailing regulatory structures consist largely of a proscriptive and legislative nature imposed by the centre on the periphery, and they have failed to stop negative trends. The profile of the incentive package for regulatory compliance is too often wrong. Incentive is the fulcrum of regulation. Regulation usually requires an element of negative incentive proscriptions backed by powers to enforce them. But any regulatory system which relies primarily on negative incentives is, in the long term, in trouble. Enforcement costs are high and the legitimacy of the system in the eyes of the enforced is called into question. History shows that such systems are unstable and that sustainable systems of regulation are those that rely primarily on positive incentives – economic, cultural and institutional – and which are affordable. Hardin's (1985) comment is relevant here: ‘We must recognize that all control operations incur costs; excessive controls generate their own kind of poverty.