Saving elephants would be a better use of our foreign aid budget

The disappearance of so many habitats and species is not just a moral disaster but an economic one, too

If you are going to have any hope of winning an argument, you have to see the other person’s point of view. You can believe passionately in your cause; you can think that your point is so blindingly obvious that it is barely worth discussing; and yet if you are to persuade you must make the mental effort to imagine someone else’s perspective.

So it is with the elephant. When I look at an elephant in the wild, I feel a sense of privilege. I see a compendium of metaphors, the byword for memory, the terror of the Roman legions, the beast whose majestic gait was called to mind by EM Forster as he tried to explain why Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony was the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated the ear of man.

When I see an African elephant, I feel rage that their population is now down to 300,000, and that we are losing these animals at a rate of 8 per cent a year. I see one of the most heartbreaking examples of the destruction that humanity is wreaking upon the natural world, and I feel so strongly about it that my case seems – to me, at times – entirely selfexplanatory.

But I am also conscious that this is not exactly the perspective of every farmer in Sub-saharan Africa. I see an asset for the world; he sees a creature that munches its way through acres of scrub that might be pasture for his cows. I see the natural inheritance that we must pass on to our children. He sees a vindictive beast, capable of running amok and trampling his family.

I see the tusks – the largest tooth of any living being – as an incredible living reminder of the sheer size of the mammals that used to roam the Pleistocene landscape. He sees – alas – the chance to tip off the poachers about the whereabouts of those tusks, and make some badly needed cash.

We just see these beasts differently, and that is why next week, in London, the UK Government is right to be holding the latest conference on the Illegal Wildlife Trade. Because the way to stamp out the trade, and the way to protect and restore the populations of elephants and all other endangered species, is to show that saving them is directly in the interests of human beings. We may have different perspectives, the African farmer and I, but the perspectives can easily be reconciled.

Next week in London, world leaders and conservationists will consider all kinds of plans to preserve the world’s flora and fauna. Among these are long-meditated plans for “green corridors” for elephants – trunk routes, if you like – that will enable them to migrate safely across Africa from one reserve to another.

All such plans need two things. They need buy-in from local politicians and communities, and they need proper funding from the big Western development organisations. The way to secure both is to show that the loss of habitats and species is not just a moral blight. It is above all an economic disaster. In the words of Zac Goldsmith MP, who is helping to organise the summit, it is a no-brainer.

As the world loses its forests – at a rate of 18.7 million acres a year (that is 27 football pitches every minute) – the most immediate victims are the 1.6 billion people, most of them poor, whose livelihood depends on forests. As we destroy our fish stocks with cynical and rapacious overfishing, it is not just a disaster for the oceans and all aquatic ecosystems; it is a disaster for the 200 million people whose jobs depend on fishing and the billion people – again mainly poor – who depend on eating fish.

The Earth has lost something like half its wild animals in the last 40 years, and that catastrophic reduction in numbers is also a disaster for the human population of Africa; because the lost animals mean a lost chance for innumerable good and sustainable jobs in conservation and protection, and the loss of such animals – charismatic megafauna or otherwise – means the loss of those irreplaceable creatures that symbolise the African continent in the imagination of every tourist on Earth.

All of which is to say that projects to protect endangered animals and plants are not mere namby-pamby sentimentality. They are about helping the poorest people in the world. They are therefore overwhelmingly deserving of Overseas Development Assistance. We spend huge quantities on aid, but, compared with Germany and America, we spend absolutely tiny sums – 0.4 per cent of £14 billion – on protecting and restoring the natural world.

Why this reluctance? It is partly because the Department for International Development has traditionally been run in an austere, purist way, as a kind of Scandiwegian NGO, that took no account of the economic or political or diplomatic objectives of the British people.

Everywhere you go, you will find other countries that subtly or openly use their development aid budgets as leverage to support their exports, or other popular objectives.

Britain has refused. With a magnificent disdain for anything so grubby as a national priority, we shove the money out of the door and into the arms of the big corporate charitable organisations that are only too happy to spend it on our behalf, no questions asked.

Much of it is well spent, on highly laudable objectives. But in the last few years the opacity of this spending, of 0.7 per cent of GDP, has provoked public disquiet. Under Priti Patel and now under Penny Mordaunt there are moves to reform – to make sure that as far as we can, within the rules, we spend our aid in a way that is at least consistent with the political and commercial priorities of this country.

That is warmly to be welcomed. It was infuriating to travel to South East Asia, and see for instance how Japanese contractors were supported by development assistance, as they applied for contracts, in ways we deem to be illegal.

If we are going to spend so much on aid – and there is no doubt that it wins Britain friends and admirers around the world – then let’s get value for this country as well. Saving elephants and protecting nature is one of the priorities of the British people. All the polls show it.

Time is running out. We can support elephant corridors, and support the people of Africa as well.