Japan’s ivory market is no longer a threat to elephant populations – here’s why

Ivory poaching has led to a 70% decline in African elephant numbers over the past 40 years.

Elephants feature heavily in mythology, religion and popular culture. Yet they are hunted for their ivory tusks. Ivory poaching has led to a 70% decline in African elephant numbers over the past 40 years.

Ivory has always been a prized commodity. It has served a variety of purposes, from use in traditional medicines to musical instruments. More recently, ivory is carved into jewellery and ornaments and used primarily for decoration.

But the international ivory trade was banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in 1989. One hundred and eighty-four countries are now bound by this agreement. However, some legal domestic markets persist, undermining efforts to stop the ivory trade. Over 42 tonnes of illegal ivory were seized worldwide in 2019, the fourth highest annual tally in the past 30 years.

Yet Japan, which between 1979 and 1989 was responsible for roughly one-third of the global ivory trade and still possesses a legal domestic market, has seen a dramatic reduction in ivory demand. By 2014, the annual value of the Japanese ivory industry was just 13% of what it was in 1989.

Various factors have been heralded for reducing Japanese ivory demand, but a lack of data on ivory purchases and consumer motivations has limited research into the cause of this change. We conducted a study to determine which factors were influential in reducing Japanese ivory demand.

For this, we carried out an impact evaluation. We compiled a list of 35 potentially important factors that could have led to a fall in Japanese demand for ivory. These included the Cites international ivory trade ban, pressure from leading conservationists, Japan’s economic recession, and targeted demand reduction campaigns.

We then interviewed 35 people with expertise in the Japanese ivory trade, including academics, NGO workers, members of the Japanese government and ivory traders and carvers. We asked them, based on their expert knowledge, whether they thought each of the factors may have affected ivory demand, and how.