CITES Totally Explained

Everything about Convention On International Trade In Endangered Species totally explained

CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) is an international agreement between governments, drafted as a result of a resolution adopted in 1973 at a meeting of members of the World Conservation Union (IUCN). Its aim is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants doesn't threaten their survival and it accords varying degrees of protection to more than 33,000 species of animals and plants. Only one species protected by CITES has become extinct in the wild as a result of trade since the Convention entered into force in 1975 (but see case studies in and Stiles 2004 for more nuanced discussions of the role CITES has played in the fate of particular species).

Background and operation

CITES is one of the largest conservation agreements in existence. Participation is voluntary, and countries that have agreed to be bound by the Convention are known as Parties. Although CITES is legally binding on the Parties, it doesn't take the place of national laws. Rather it provides a framework to be respected by each Party, which has to adopt its own domestic legislation to make sure that CITES is implemented at the national level. Often, domestic legislation is either non-existent (especially in Parties that have not ratified it), or with penalties incommensurate with the gravity of the crime and insufficient deterrents to wildlife traders. As of 2002, 50% of Parties lacked one or more of the four major requirements for a Party: designation of Management and Scientific Authorities (see below); laws prohibiting the trade in violation of CITES; penalties for such trade; laws providing for the confiscation of specimens
   The text of the Convention was concluded at a meeting of representatives of 80 countries in Washington, D.C., United States, on 3 March 1973. It was then open for signature until 31 December 1974. It entered into force after the 10th ratification by a signatory country, on 1 July 1975. Countries that signed the Convention become Parties by ratifying, accepting or approving it. By the end of 2003, all signatory countries had become Parties. Countries that were not signatories may become Parties by acceding to the Convention. As of September 2007, 172 Countries had become Parties to the Convention.
   Funding for the activities of the Secretariat and COP meetings comes from a Trust Fund derived from Party contributions. Trust Fund money isn't available to Parties to improve implementation or compliance. These activities, and all those outside Secretariat activities (training, species specific programs such as Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants - MIKE) must find external funding (often from NGOs and bilateral aid) and funding doesn't provide for increased on the ground enforcement (must apply for bilateral aid for most projects of this nature.
   By design, CITES regulates and monitors trade in the manner of a "negative list" such that trade in all species is permitted and unregulated unless the species in question appears on the Appendices or looks very much like one of those taxa ... then and only then, trade is regulated or constrained. Because the remit of the Convention covers millions of species of plants and animals, and tens of thousands of these taxa are potentially of economic value, in practice this negative list approach effectively forces CITES signatories to expend limited resources on just a select few, leaving many species to be traded with neither constraint nor review. For example, recently several bird species which are classified as threatened with extinction appeared in the legal wild bird trade because their status had never been considered by the CITES process. If a "positive list" approach were taken, only species which have been evaluated and approved for the positive list would be permitted in trade, thus lightening the review burden for both member states and the Secretariat, and also preventing poorly known species from being inadvertently threatened by legal trade. Whilst many developing countries have been eager to join CITES, the annual costs of staffing and maintaining a CITES office and an effective presence at the biennial CoP gatherings remain unaffordable for many signatory nations. In practice, these offices and staff are nearly always the same as those which license, permit, and collect fees for the hunting, trade, and protection of wild plants and animals. Because these fees collected from wildlife traders often represent a significant source of these CITES offices operational budgets, the structure of CITES creates a direct conflict of interest between these offices and the resources they're tasked with managing. Moreover, the CITES Secretariat itself is largely dependent on signatories' offices for determinations on whether the trade in a given species is "non-detrimental." Consequently, this structure for information gathering and decision making at both the national and Secretariat level is inherently biased in favor of trade over protection.
   Specific weaknesses in the text include: it doesn't stipulate guidelines for the 'non-detriment' finding required of national Scientific Authorities; non-detriment findings require copious amounts of information; the 'household effects' clause is often not rigid enough/specific enough to prevent CITES violations by means of this Article (VII); non-reporting from Parties means Secretariat monitoring is incomplete; and it has no capacity to address domestic trade in listed species.
   Suggestions for improvement in the operation of CITES include: more regular missions by the Secretariat (not reserved just for high profile species); improvement of national legislation and enforcement; better reporting by Parties (and the consolidation of information from all sources-NGOs, TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network and Parties); more emphasis on enforcement-including a technical committee enforcement officer; the development of CITES Action Plans (akin to Biodiversity Action Plans related to the Convention on Biological Diversity) including: designation of Scientific/Management Authorities and national enforcement strategies; incentives for reporting and timelines for both Action Plans and reporting. CITES would benefit from access to GEF funds-although this is difficult given the GEFs more ecosystem approach-or other more regular funds. Development of a funding mechanism similar to that of the Montreal Protocol (developed nations contribute to a fund for developing nations) could allow more funds for non-Secretariat activities.Further Information

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