Posts in the News Category

Buddha’s ‘Birthday’ Celebration and Festival – Viet Nam 25 May 2015.

Today in Viet Nam Buddhists come together to celebrate Vesak 2559. To Westerners this is often called Buddha’s Birthday. Buddha stressed that the way to pay homage to him on this day was not merely by offering flowers, incense and lights, but by truly and sincerely striving to follow his teachings. So this celebration is an opportunity to reflect: Am I really following the Buddha’s teaching? The day celebrates enlightenment – which can be defined as the full realization of the truth of the Buddha’s teachings. [Read more…]

Introduction

In October 2014 I had the pleasure of meeting Trang Nguyen a Vietnamese conservationist and the Founder/Director of Vietnamese based NGO WildAct (http://www.wildact-vn.org).  I was in Hanoi to review the response the BTB’s pilot RhiNo campaign; Trang and I spent a day together talking about our observations of the complexities of the rhino conservation – supply – demand chain. As we talked we walked around the streets of the old town, past traditional medicine shops. Trang patiently translated any rhino marketing materials, some promoting the rhino horn grinding dish while others had notices saying it was illegal to sell rhino horn. Since then we have collaborated on a Lunar New Year project and keep in regular contact.

An Insight of the Rhino Crisis in Viet Nam – by Trang Nguyen, Founder WildAct Viet Nam

African rhinos are being slaughtered and Viet Nam needs to take a big share of the blame. Increasing demand from Viet Nam is driving the poaching crisis on the African continent. Vietnamese not only use rhino horn as an ingredient in traditional medicine but also as a luxury item to show off to peers or a ‘gift’ for corruption to gain favours.

[Read more…]

While visiting Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City late last year as part of Breaking The Brand’s rhino horn demand reduction efforts I was stuck by the beauty of the two Vietnamese cities. The trees where the primary reason that Hanoi instantaneously became one of my all-time favourite cities.

So I was shocked to hear in April that Hanoi was considering cutting down 6,700 trees, more than a quarter of all its trees.

[Read more…]

Breaking The Brand is a volunteer organisation that doesn’t currently have the funds to do substantial evaluations. But that doesn’t mean that we haven’t tried to evaluate the response to our pilot campaign in Viet Nam.  In early 2014, long before our pilot campaign was launched, we approached an international company with offices in Viet Nam to ask if we could interview senior managers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. To clarify:

• The managers were Vietnamese citizens
• The interviews would be voluntary and no personal information would be collected
• In volunteering for the interviews, this in no way indicated that the interviewee was a rhino horn user, simply that they were part of the demographic group that could afford genuine rhino horn
• Even though the company supported the interviews, the evaluation would not formally be linked to the company
• We wanted to interview at least 30 people

We know from our 15 years’ experience in executive coaching that the quality of the information you get from interviews with people that you have never met before and who may have good reason not to trust you, especially if they didn’t initiate the coaching themselves, depends entirely on how you approach the interview. [Read more…]

When we started Breaking The Brand it was because we saw a lack of focus on the root cause of rhino poaching and wildlife crime in general, namely the end user. Similarly, the work that was being done on the demand side in the main did not resonate with the primary users of genuine rhino horn.

All the work undertaken from anti-poaching measures to dehorning, though absolutely necessary or worth trying, in effect tackle the symptoms and not the root cause. However, after recent work in both Viet Nam and South Africa, the Breaking The Brand leadership team has found itself debating if the root cause driving the current rhino poaching tragedy has shifted, and we believe perhaps it has.

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The market for wild animals, both illegal and endangered, has changed significantly in recent years. It is essential that the responses needed to contain escalating demand evolve in answer to the new tactics of the wildlife traffickers.

In the last few decades many large conservation bodies have accepted, to some degree, the commoditisation of wildlife with the aim to reduce human-wildlife conflict. With the rapid acceleration of wealth in Asia the demand for many of these ‘products’ has spiralled out of control to the point where there is a real chance of iconic species such as rhinos, tigers, elephants and lions being driven to extinction in the wild on our watch. The current skills and experience of the large conservation bodies are looking less relevant in addressing and containing this development. But the question is: Do they see this and, if they do, are they willing to be open to the skills development and culture change required?

[Read more…]

Breaking The Brand’s supporters do it again – Vietnamese New Year Campaign ‘Will your luck run out?’ went live on the 16th January 2015. To follow up from our successful pilot campaign ‘Is it worth the risk?’, the Breaking The Brand project team has created a campaign for Vietnamese New Year or Tet. This could not have been done without our supporters in Australia and worldwide who donated the funds to run full-page adverts in key business, lifestyle and women’s magazines for 5 weeks leading up to the lunar New Year on the 19th February 2015. This includes a full-page advert in Heritage Magazine, the in-flight magazine of Viet Nam Airlines throughout February, a time when many wealthy Vietnamese are travelling to see family for the holiday.

Saigon Business Weekend – advert 16^th January 2015. Target businessmen, circulation 30,000 + weekly

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It is no secret that the South African Government has approved the submission to the next CITES conference, scheduled to take place in 2016 in South Africa, to introduce a regulated international trade in rhino horn. Backing this approach are a number of pro-trade lobby groups. Even through the commonly held belief is that it is unlikely to be permitted, pro-trade trade groups will spend the time leading up to the October 2016 conference trying to prove that a legalised trade in rhino horn is the only way to save the animal.

One of the final things to stand in their way is a successful demand reduction approach to stop rhino poaching. The conservation industry has an 18 month time window to demonstrate the effectiveness of demand reduction strategies. The problem is that the conservation industry doesn’t have extensive experience in researching, designing and producing demand reduction initiatives. Over the years they have run:

• Fantastic awareness raising advertising campaigns
• Good quality education strategies

Currently too many awareness raising and education strategies are being packaged and sold to the public as demand reduction and they are not. If this is not recognised it has the potential to provide the pro-trade lobby with ‘evidence’ that demand reduction strategies haven’t worked to save the rhino. It is imperative that the conservation industry in its naivety of what a demand reduction campaign really is doesn’t play into this.

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Over the last 6 months I have forgotten how many times I have recommended to my contacts in the conservation industry to watch the BBC series ’The Men Who Made Us Spend’ and in particular Episode 2. In this episode Jacques Peretti explores how fear has a powerful hold over our behaviours – and how this has been exploited by those who want to sell us products and services. He meets the men who sold us cigarettes, SUVs, soap, and even bottled water off the back of our anxieties – and our desire to have those anxieties banished. The strategies and techniques used to manipulate us to spend are the same ones that can be used to manipulate the users of illegal and endangered wildlife products into stopping their purchasing behaviour.

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A lot is being done to save the rhino, yet poaching levels continue to increase and demand for rhino horn shows no signs of abating soon. With all the money going into protecting the species from possible extinction within the next 10 years, why aren’t we making inroads? From Breaking The Brand’s perspective there is a misalignment in funding between the strategies that are most likely to save the rhino if used in the right combination.

To understand why this is happening and how it can be corrected, let’s begin by outlining the three strategies that we feel could work well together:

1. Anti-poaching and security measures in Africa and Asia
2. (Physical) Horn devaluation measures (toxin infusion) in Africa and Asia
3. Demand reduction (psychological devaluation) in primary user countries (in the main Viet Nam, then China and other Asian countries)

[Read more…]