Mapping political will within South Africa’s illegal wildlife trade policy system : a complexity thinking analysis

Abstract

This study sets out to generate a new approach to analysing the level of political will that drives South Africa’s illegal wildlife trade (IWT) policies. It uses complexity thinking to conceptualise the country’s policy making process as a complex system and then maps the feedback loops that a range of international and local actors and policies produce. This information and a more specific interpretation of political will were then used to develop a series of causal loop diagrams (CLDs) to assess the wider systemic impact of these interactions.

The CLD analyses found that political will does indeed exist within the South African IWT policy system and that these policies and the political interests of policy makers often overlap. Moreover, this study found that the inaction of individual policy enforcement officers effects the level of political will throughout the system. Consequently, this inaction retards the system’s adaptability and allows the illegal trade to flourish.

To build and sustain political will towards curbing IWT, this study finds that policy makers at all levels should build appropriate human and technical capacity. It proposes that by properly incentivising and training officials, policy makers will be able to garner sufficient political will to ensure the effectiveness of current policies.