In the last lesson, our group picked up the topic about apartheid. It was very meaningful for me to study the history on discrimination in Africa. But in the last half of lesson, our teacher Damon gave us some challenging problems, the part of which is about the trade in illicit ivory. So, I would like to talk about ivory.

First of all, what is it ivory?  Since the past, people have been processing ivory and making several products such as musical instruments, craftworks and especially personal seals in Japan. But in Japan, most ivory is imported and China is also big buyer in the world. On the other hand, main exporters are African countries. Cote d’ivoire ,which beated Japan in the World Cup, is one of the largest exporters. That country has another name, Ivory Coast, which means it has been exporting ivory by the ships.

Since 1989, the Washington Treaty has been reducing the trade on ivory. It was held because a lot of elephants was killed by hunters and many people feared that elephants would became extinct. This talks decided to take measures to number each elephants. In that time, the main measure is grasp the numbers of the elephants but that was not succeeded.

I think that poaching elephants is deeper problem. The hunters in Africa want to earn money because of the lack of legal profitable labor. And they also give some profit local people. That’s because killing elephants links to saving their crops and houses from them. Local people are afraid of being damaged by elephants and have been fighting against them. In this topic, several stances are involved. It is bad to takikng a stopgap measure can resolve the complex problem.