Mike Norton-Griffiths
Mike Norton-Griffiths spent his first five years in Africa as senior ecologist of the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, before moving to Kenya to found the environmental consulting group, EcoSystems Ltd. In 1987 he spent a year managing the IUCN Eastern Sahel Programme before moving to UNEP to direct the GEMS/UNITAR Africa Programme. 1992 was spent as a visiting scientist at the Harvard Institute for International Development after which he moved to the Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE) in the Department of Economics, University College, London. In 1996/97 he took a sabbatical of sorts as a crewmember onboard the winning yacht “Arial” in the Clipper ’96 round the world yacht race. Back in Kenya, he undertakes research and consulting assignments in land use economics and the economic implications of conservation and land use policy. He is currently a visiting Fellow at the Property and Environment Research Centre, Bozeman, Montana.
Papers Published in World Economics:
How Many Wildebeest do You Need?
The catastrophic decline of wildlife in Kenya—some 60% over the last 30 years—finally galvanised the government into a review of wildlife policy. But what should have been a sober discussion of market failures, institutional failures, policy failures and conservation failures was hijacked by the international animal welfare lobby and degenerated into a sterile shouting match about the reintroduction of consumptive utilisation and sport hunting. The resulting Wildlife Act, by pandering to the welfare lobby, removes all remaining incentives for communities and landowners to keep wildlife on their land.
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