The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
The CITES Convention is made up of 184 countries, formally known as "Parties", working together to regulate the legal international wildlife trade. Parties typically made decisions on wildlife trade without access to a tool that showed trade flows globally, with weak information systems about wild meat, and without an idea of whether trade quotas were sustainable. We developed a package of tools for CITES COP 19 including the Wildlife Trade View which was well received and taken up by Parties to the convention, as well as by observers from NGOs and other civil society.
We produced a paper presenting evidence that 904 threatened species likely threatened by international trade might need to be included under the CITES convention trade regulations. This paper quickly informed CITES deliberations and led to several additional species being added to CITES trade annexes, improving data for parties. This process will continue through future CITES COPs and has also come into increased focus by the EU, who are picking this up as part of their work. There is movement indicating that other countries may be doing the same.
In addition to supporting CITES Parties to identify species that may merit listing in the Convention, the methodology developed could also provide a useful tool for supporting Parties to track progress towards the CITES Strategic Vision (e.g., objectives 1.4 and 1.5, as well as the proposed indicator 1.4.2 recommended for consideration in document SC77 Doc. 16), as well as the global commitments under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (e.g., Targets 4 and 5 on extinction risk and ensuring trade is sustainable) Work done by UNEP-WCMC and submitted by the UK Govt https://cites.org/sites/default/files/documents/E-SC77-Inf-12.pdf addresses this aspect of the convention, and will lead to further impacts. At the Panama CITES COP West African countries requested extinction risk document . Our work can inform this document which will feed into the CITES decision making process.
Our work has assisted 184 Parties to the CITES convention who can now make better policy decisions on their legal trade in wildlife. This impact will be further enhanced when with the future launch of our sustainability assessment tool. We have also provided inputs to the assessments under IPBES that provide information for decision making among 94 countries who are members and many other UN agencies, think tanks and NGOs.
Our contributions have strengthened CITES data and empowered parties with the information needed to support sustainable decision-making on the global species trade.