ABSTRACT

The illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is one of the most acute global conservation challenges. This paper examines what is driving young men to enter the rhino horn trade while advancing theory on environmental conflict. We show how the illicit rhino horn economy is a telling instance of environmental conflict—largely between ground-level hunters and increasingly militarized state conservation forces—that emerges from a context of radical inequality. We examine how practices ranging from labor migration and sidelining rural development to biodiversity conservation itself have profoundly transformed the Mozambican-South African borderlands from which many hunters originate, in turn generating poverty, exclusion, and vulnerability across the region. Juxtaposed against the wealth afforded by rhino hunting, this changing agrarian political economy has created an enabling environment for the rhino horn economy to take off. Illicit hunting, in other words, has become an attractive albeit risky livelihood alternative. We close by examining two questions that broaden our understanding of both environmental conflict and IWT: under what conditions might poverty lead to environmental harm and to what extent should such conflict be read as resistance that can bring about more just ends.

摘要

非法野生动物贸易（IWT）是全球最严峻的保护挑战之一。本文探讨了是什么促使年轻人进入犀牛角贸易，同时推进有关环境冲突的理论。我们展示了非法犀牛角经济如何成为环境冲突的一个生动例子——主要是在地面猎人和日益军事化的国家保护部队之间——这种冲突是在极端不平等的背景下出现的。我们研究了从劳务移民和边缘化农村发展到生物多样性保护本身等各种做法如何深刻改变了许多猎人的发源地莫桑比克-南非边境地区，进而在整个地区造成贫困、排斥和脆弱性。与犀牛狩猎所带来的财富相比，这种不断变化的农业政治经济为犀牛角经济的腾飞创造了有利的环境。换句话说，非法狩猎已成为一种有吸引力但有风险的生计选择。最后，我们研究了两个问题，这两个问题拓宽了我们对环境冲突和内河运输的理解：在什么条件下贫困可能会导致环境损害，以及这种冲突在多大程度上应被视为可以带来更公正结果的抵抗。