As part of my Masters degree I had to undertake an internship in a region of armed conflict or post-conflict, working with a relevant NGO on the topic of my dissertation. I wanted to examine the linkages between conservation and postwar recovery, and was fortunate to get the chance to work in eastern DRC and Rwanda. One of the projects being run by the NGO that I interned with was a honey cooperative. They were working with local communities to develop a social enterprise to produce and sell honey in nearby markets, to create employment and income to stop poaching.

The idea was sound, but the execution epitomized why CIWT approaches have yet to scale and bring an end to the trade. A Ugandan member of the team, with no commercial background, was trying to teach members of the Rwandan local community, via a translator, how to develop a business model to produce, process, transport and sell their honey. I bought a pot of honey back home with me and ran some taste tests with friends and family, all of whom were impressed by the quality. Here was a product – “gorilla-friendly” honey – that tasted great and could potentially have built a strong brand, but it was going nowhere. That was my first experience of how important it is to get the right people involved, and it was the first time I saw the potential to scale existing conservation projects to deliver a commercial solution. There is some great work in the CIWT space, but without a shift in strategy that will enable that work to significantly expand its impact, the trade is unlikely to end. It echoes a point made by John and his POPOF team in the DRC; they know what is needed to stop poaching, but they don't know how to execute those ideas at the scale required to end poaching. You can have the greatest strategy in the world, but if you don't have the people or finance in place to execute it effectively, the chances of failure remain high.