The CITES Convention and trade in animals and plants

The factual information for the CITES activities comes in particular from the national reporting which parties have to provide; information from non-governmental organisations, scientists and other sources is just supplementary. The monitoring of data by the CITES Secretariat is complicated by the fact that only about 45 per cent of all national reports are submitted in time. To this difficulty has to be added the fact that for the great majority of Appendix I and II species there is no regular requirement for reviewing the status of the species. Together with the increasing illegal trade in wildlife, this sometimes renders decision-making by the CITES complex, all the more as the CITES-decisions are only to a limited degree based on the precautionary principle.

The CITES Secretariat notifies all parties, when it learns that a party has infringed the CITES Convention. It has a very limited range of possibilities to bring a party back to compliance. These include the suspension of cooperation from the Secretariat, the recommendation to all parties to suspend the CITES-related trade with the offending party, a formal warning and a list of corrective measures which the offending party should take before the Secretariat will resume cooperation or recommend other parties resume trade. In early 2015, the CITES had recommended restrictions on trade with 31 countries, some of them being in application for more than twenty years.

The CITES is not an enforcement agency. It has the statutory function to regulate trade in endangered species, and all the financial contributions which the parties to the Convention have to make to the CITES are destined for that objective. Therefore, any CITES activity to combat wildlife trafficking, to improve capacity building in countries, or to examine the status or trends of specific species have to be financed through voluntary contributions. This also applies to the activities of ICCWC, of TRAFFIC or of the numerous other non-governmental organisations which are not mentioned here, but which are active in nature conservation, the protection of species and their habitats and in fighting illegal wildlife trade. It is self-evident that financial resources to optimise the fight against wildlife trafficking are not sufficient, and that more financial means - for INTERPOL, the CITES or non-governmental organisations - would allow the fight against organised crime and against wildlife trafficking to be more efficient.