An Economy for Elephants: Thriving in a Biodiverse World

By Tessa Vanderkop, Director of Elephanatics

On this Earth Day, I find myself looking back at a time when the state of our world—and the slow elimination of elephants—felt like a reason only for tears. For years, I held a deep love for these intelligent, social, and ecologically vital beings, yet the problem always felt too vast for one person to change.

The statistics are horrifying and by now well known.  Every 15 minutes an elephant is poached for its ivory (15,000 to 20,000 annually). The precipitous population decline from approximately 1.3 million in 1970s to 350,000 today puts them at risk of extinction within the our generation.

When the team at Elephanatics and I co-led the Ivory-Free-Canada campaign, it took years of collective effort to tighten Canada’s outdated ivory regulations. That dedication paid off in November 2023 when the government announced historic amendments to the Wild Animal and Plant Trade Regulations (WAPTR). Enacted on January 8, 2024, these new laws effectively closed Canada’s borders to the import and export of raw ivory and rhino horn, and finally banned the importation of hunting trophies.

Because these kinds of wins,  as important as they are, remain fundamentally insufficient in the face of a much larger crisis.

A landmark 2019 report from the United Nations found that over one million species are now at risk of extinction. Human activity has altered 75% of terrestrial environments and 40% of marine ecosystems. We are degrading soils, polluting waterways, and pushing critical systems toward collapse. In the past two decades alone, half of the world’s coral reefs have been lost.

Elephants are not disappearing in isolation. They are part of a much broader unraveling with scientists warning that we’re approaching a tipping point toward potential collapse.

When we look closely at the threats facing elephants, poaching, habitat loss, human-wildlife conflict, and fragmentation, we begin to see that something much larger is happening. They are symptoms of the same underlying system: an economy built on extraction.

The very nature of our economy is based on extractive practices, known as the “take, make, waste” capital economy that focusses on profit as the key indicator of success.   If we take elephants as an example, the quadruple threats of biodiversity loss, human wildlife conflict, habitat fragmentation and poaching we can see more clearly that the economic system that we created serves the profit goals primarily of shareholders and boards and not the greater good of people and planet. The very resources that fuel this economy are limited and this shortsightedness has left us in a mess of our own making.

A redesign of our economic system is desperately required. Economic systems are created by humans and can be reengineered to align with the well-being of all.  The good news is the “well-being” or “purpose” economy is already well underway.

A purpose economy is an economy powered by the pursuit of long-term well-being for all in which business and regulatory and financial systems foster an equitable, flourishing, resilient future.

The Canadian Purpose Economy Project was founded for exactly this reason. As we work with adjacent movements in the circular economy, clean energy transition and the wellbeing economy we can see the offramp to the   legacy economic system (current system)  that has fueled the climate and biodiversity crisis, fostered inequality, war and global instability.

Can we staunch the bleeding before it’s too late? The work that so many do to enact measures and regulations will and can help. But it won’t change the flawed foundations on which we have built the modern economy. The work I do in the purpose economy is fueled by my passion to save the world’s elephants. Let’s re-imagine an economic system where humans, our beautiful planet and yes, elephants can thrive for now and future generations

People driving change are ordinary everyday people finding something they’re passionate about and deciding to take small extraordinary steps every day to try to make a difference.

It often starts by recognizing what you are incredibly passionate about, and understanding what your unique strengths are to help advance your cause.

What are your strengths and what moves you to make the world a better place?