Pilot World Wildlife Trade Report officially launched
at World Wildlife Conference in Panama
The CITES Secretariat has published the first-ever World Wildlife Trade Report, that gives insights and analysis into the global trade in animals and plants that are regulated under this international treaty.
CITES is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and it regulates trade in nearly 40,000 species, worldwide. 183 of the world’s governments (and also the European Union) have agreed to be bound by its terms, that aim to stop international trade becoming a threat to the viability of any species it lists.
The report is a joint production involving a partnership of UN organisations and leading conservation organizations: the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), along with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and TRAFFIC. The milestone report is packed with statistics that cover the routes, scale, and patterns of legal, international trade in CITES-listed species, together with the values, conservation impacts, and socio-economic benefits of this trade and the linkages between legal and illegal trade.
The report draws on millions of records, with more than 1.2 million CITES trade permits issued every year. Over 80 pages, it looks into a wide range of trade topics. It is the first report of its kind that is designed to help inform conservation policies and practices for governments, organisations, businesses and trade bodies as well as the media and general public. It will also contribute to CITES’ global vision, which is that by 2030, all trade in listed species should be legal, traceable and sustainable. The report is having its official launch as part of the World Wildlife Conference or CITES CoP19, which is on this month, in Panama, from November 14 to 25.
The full report can be downloaded at https://cites.org/eng
