International Intervention is Not the Only Way to Save Depleting Resources

Abstract

Growing concerns over biodiversity and environmental conservation are causing some cultures to abandon the harvesting of wild foods. Among Asian wild food harvesting cultures, the harvest of such resources as whale, tuna, shark's fin, and bird's nests has provoked grave concern. International organizations such as IWC (International Whaling Commission), CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) and FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) tried to regulate the harvest and trade of those animals and products. Any conservation policy, however, must consider the cultural history of the exploitation of each of these resources. Trepang, haishen, or holothurian may be one of the resources nearing depletion. Interestingly enough, while the trepang market is almost exclusively Chinese, it has been a major export product from Japan and Southeast Asia to China for at least three hundred years. Currently, tropical countries such as the Philippines export some twenty species of trepang, and temperate countries including Japan, one or two. A question that must be asked is what kinds of changes have been observed in ecological, political, economical and cultural spheres over the past three hundred years. In this paper, I will first present my view against the trend for international trepang trade regulation. Second, an overview of the history of trepang exploitation and trade, focusing primarily on that of the Philippines will be provided. Furthermore, the present situation in the Philippines will be described, based on my five-year survey on the expansion of the trepang industry. On the basis of information flow and interrelationships between Chinese traders in Hong Kong and the Philippines, I will emphasize that 1) the trepang industry has established multi-ethnic network chains from producers to consumers, and therefore, 2) the management of trepang resources needs commitment and support from trepang traders.