CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The world is currently experiencing a global pandemic with an unprecedented scale of health, social and economic impacts. Some ?Northern? conservation organizations and academics have been quick to advocate for complete restriction of the commercial trade, especially when animals are intended for human consumption and particularly in wet markets to avoid future pandemics. Proposed bans ranged from closing down live wildlife markets, to ending the keeping, breeding, and use of all wildlife, which also covers traditional medicine. In this presentation we analyze the impact of wildlife trade bans on local livelihoods and conservation through a political ecology lens, by making use of the case study of blue fronted amazon chick (Amazona aestiva) trade from the Chaco region in Argentina. Imports of wild birds to the European Union were banned in 2005, following the avian flu H5N1 pandemic, as a result of the lobby from conservation organizations and European bird traders. Although avian flu originated from poultry and migrating bird populations in Asia, the ban was never revoked. As a result of the ban, a well-managed programme which generated revenues to local indigenous people and conservation was dismantled, and deforestation in the region increased. We conclude that indiscriminate bans and restrictions weaken sustainable use by local communities, risk being inequitable and ineffective and may increase poverty and vulnerability. Patterns of consumption and production as well as land conversion and industrial agriculture should be revised instead. The COVID-19 pandemic should serve as a wake-up call for a paradigm shift both in many aspects of the relationship between humans and Nature and also in our approach to conservation.

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