Sustainable use group openly working with right-wing science deniers
The African Wildlife Economy Institute is working with the UK’s worst free market think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs, to promote sustainable use.
The African Wildlife Economy Institute COO Deborah Vorhies contacted me earlier this year and tried to convince me to stop criticizing sustainable use. She obviously failed her mission.
Nonetheless, I found our conversation insightful. I learned that the AWEI wouldn’t exist today without the funding from the Oppenheimer family, some of South Africa’s worst human rights abusers.
I also learned that the AWEI collaborated with the Institute of Economic Affairs behind closed doors. I was surprised that Vorhies divulged the AWEI’s relationship with the IEA given that no so-called conservation group would ever want to be associated with them.
I knew the IEA was one of the first UK organizations to promote sustainable use. And I also knew the AWEI partnered with the Atlas Network, a web of science-denying free market think tanks created by the IEA’s founder.
But the IEA has a reputation for being one of the UK’s most horrid and debilitating right-wing organizations, and few people have heard of the Atlas Network. Even Michael ‘t Sas-Rolfes, an AWEI member, hates when I write about his work for the IEA to promote sustainable use in the 1990s.
[Sas-Rolfes currently works for the Property and Environment Research Center, a US-based free market think tank known for climate denial. Notice a pattern?]
To understand why someone like Sas-Rolfes would be embarrassed to be associated with the IEA, here is a brief history of its operations:
It worked with Margaret Thatcher to usher in the UK’s destructive neoliberal era.
It worked with the tobacco industry to deceive the public about tobacco smoking’s health risks.
It spent decades espousing climate denial for the fossil fuel industry.
It told a US agribusiness donor it could influence its research reports in exchange for funding.
It breached charity law by campaigning for hard Brexit.
It helped Liz Truss tank the UK’s economy.
Imagine my utter shock when I saw that the IEA published a podcast episode on YouTube with AWEI founder Frank Vorhies. The AWEI isn’t even trying to hide it anymore – its unapologetically working with right-wing science deniers to promote sustainable use.
The podcast episode sits among the IEA’s other videos that include transphobia, anti-socialist propaganda, and Brexit apologia. And that’s only what’s been posted in the last two weeks!
IEA Director of Public Policy and Communications Matthew Lesh hosted the podcast episode with the AWEI. The best word to describe Lesh would be asshole. He tried to pick a Twitter fight with the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers over striking union members.
Any enemy of striking union members is an enemy of the working class. Any enemy of the working class is your enemy. It doesn’t matter if you live in the US, the UK, or Namibia. The IEA and the AWEI do not have your best interests at heart.
Sustainable use activists like to talk big about how they’re working to benefit wildlife and people. These free market fundamentalists don’t care about wildlife or people – all they care about is protecting their right-wing sugar daddies’ capitalist interests.
The AWEI basically said, “we think you’re all idiots,” when it did that podcast with the IEA. Its spouting nonsense about how trophy hunting and wildlife trade are scientifically proven to benefit conservation while thinking you’re too dumb to realize they’re trying to justify the existence of a failed political ideology.
The world is experiencing a biodiversity crisis. Inequality is running rampant. People live in extreme poverty. Only a fool would think that the cause of our problems is our solution.