Endangered Species Threatened Convention

The Past, Present and Future of CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora

Barnabas Dickson, Jon Hutton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134194414
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is the best known and most controversial of international conservation treaties. Since it came into force 25 years ago, debate has raged over its most basic assumptions. CITES treats the international trade in wildlife as the most important threat to the continued existence of wild species. It offers a prescription of trade bans and restrictions for endangered species. However, it is now generally acknowledged that for most species habitat loss is a much more significant threat. Some argue that the CITES remedy actually exacerbates the problem by removing the incentive to conserve wildlife habitat.

This collection of essays, the first of its kind, charts the controversies and changes within CITES. It provides case studies of the way CITES has dealt with particular species and notes the growing role of the South in shaping the direction of the treaty. It considers the role of sustainable use, the precautionary principle and unilateralism within CITES. Finally, it examines options for the future of CITES. Implicit within a number of the contributions is the recognition that questions of wildlife conservation cannot be divorced from wider issues of land use, development and social justice.

This book provides an essential resource for policy makers, practitioners, academics and students concerned with conservation, development and trade.

Part I

BACKGROUND

Chapter 1

CITES: The Vision

Chris Huxley

INTRODUCTION

CITES, known in its early days as the ‘Washington Convention’, has become the world’s best known wildlife conservation convention. Since it was originally signed in 1973 it has received a great deal of public attention and media interest for a combination of reasons.

First and foremost, CITES deals with highly emotive issues such as: the exploitation of nature for profit; the trafficking in illegal goods; the killing or capture of wild animals; and the use of these animals for what some would regard as abhorrent purposes. Secondly, it is one of the few international vehicles for wildlife conservation that at least appears to provide some much-needed action. The inclusion of particular species in the appendices of CITES has often been heralded as a triumph for conservation, and the imposition of trade bans and the seizure of shipments of illegal specimens have both been seen as positive contributions to international conservation. The fact that none of these measures is real conservation action is another matter – it is the perception that something is being done that has led to CITES’ unique position. Finally, it has been recognized by many professionals working in the field of wildlife conservation as a remarkably potent tool which, if used well and applied correctly, could lead to substantial progress in halting the over-exploitation of wildlife resources.

The huge interest in the convention was initially generated mainly by western societies or western cultural values. This has had a profound effect on the way in which it has developed, as well as promoting the false impression that actions of the treaty are real conservation actions. It is this latter point that has given rise to rifts between the various groups that have been involved in CITES and to a frequent failure to recognize that CITES is not an end in itself, but a tool to be used to assist real conservation actions. So, how did CITES come to occupy this pre-eminent position? How did it come into being? What was it originally intended to achieve and how? These are questions that need to be addressed if we are to understand CITES and how it has developed into the treaty that many people know of, but which very few really understand.

BACKGROUND

Man’s exploitation of wildlife for profit is not a recent phenomenon and the international trade in wildlife has been widespread for many centuries. In earlier times, some of this trade caused the decline of wildlife populations, but this was neither as frequent as in this century, nor regarded as a matter of any great concern. The world was a bigger place then, with fewer people. The critical factors that changed were the huge expansion in the human population (both in numbers and in geographical space) and the rapid development of modern systems of transport and communications. Together, these have acted to increase the rate and scope of man’s exploitation of wildlife, as well as allowing information about it to become more widely available.

The very rapid increase in man’s ability to exploit wildlife commercially for international trade, coupled with a concomitant increase in demand for wildlife and its products in the developed world, led to what seemed to be a series of significant species depletions. These reductions were sometimes localized and at other times widespread. They generally, however, shared the characteristic that they involved species that were easily recognized and ‘popular’ in the sense that the public (at least in the western world) acknowledged them as being of some aesthetic value. Subsequently, it became apparent that some of these declines had not been as severe as originally portrayed and this was to lead to considerable controversy.

Despite popular belief to the contrary, there have been remarkably few, if any, species extinctions that can be attributed to exploitation for international trade. There is a possible explanation for this. Although commercial exploitation may result in a reduction in numbers, there will come a point, before biological extinction occurs, when the numbers are so reduced, and individuals of the species correspondingly so difficult and costly to locate, that exploitation is no longer commercially viable. At that point, commercial exploitation will cease. However, for at least some species this explanation will not be valid. In some specialized markets (rare parrots, for example) the demand, and thus the commercial value, will increase with rarity. In these cases commercial exploitation may still be viable even when the numbers become very low, and exploitation may continue until extinction occurs. Nonetheless, it is an observable fact that, at most, very few species have been entirely exterminated as a result of international trade. Many have become extinct as a direct result of exploitation, but this has been for purposes other than international trade. So international trade does not seem to be an important factor in species loss. Despite this, much of the concern behind the creation of CITES was that species would indeed become extinct as a result of this factor. An additional concern was the issue of species depletion (ie the significant reduction of the population of a species) although the significance of this element was apparently not great in the debate that led up to the creation of CITES.

The expression of international concern took a long time to develop any real momentum. In the early part of this century it was a rare occurrence for opposition to be voiced with respect to the exploitation of wildlife for international trade. This was partly because it had not yet become a major and highly visible problem and partly because the wildlife conservation ethic was only just beginning to emerge as a force in international affairs.

THE FIRST STEPS

Although concerted local and national efforts to promote wildlife conservation (many of which were motivated by selfish interests) date back many centuries, it is only relatively recently that such efforts have been made in the international arena. An early attempt to use international legislation to promote wildlife conservation was the 1911 Fur Seal Convention, designed to deal with the problem of over-exploitation of the fur seals of the Pribilof Islands. Further such moves have led to several other conventions, including the International Convention on the Regulation of Whaling in 1946. These, and others, emerged from an increasing recognition that some important wildlife populations were becoming drastically reduced through uncontrolled exploitation for various purposes. This lack of control was clearly a central element motivating the concern.

During the 1950s, conservationists began to worry that the escalating international trade in both live animals and their products constituted a severe threat to species survival. At first this attention focused on a relatively narrow range of species, including the spotted cats (traded for their furs), primates (used in medical research) and crocodiles (killed for their skins). In time the concern widened. By 1960 there was sufficient international impetus for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), at its General Assembly to draw attention to the problem and urge governments to take action to prevent international trade in wildlife taken illegally It is significant that the first calls for action demanded the establishment of import controls to prevent illegal trade, where illegal trade was understood as trade in wildlife taken in or exported from the country of origin in contravention of that country’s laws. Nevertheless, the knowledge of what was actually occurring was very superficial. For example, an early emphasis on trophy hunting as a threat to species developed and it remained a significant element in the events leading up to the establishment of CITES, despite the fact that evidence that this was indeed a threat was scanty.

The IUCN’s next General Assembly, held in Nairobi in 1963, passed a resolution calling for an international convention to address the issue. This was followed with the preparation of a first draft of such a convention in 1964. Thereafter, there was substantial consultation involving international organizations such as the United Nations and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Concern was not limited to wildlife conservationists, as many others interested in the issue for other reasons were also worried. For example, the International Fur Trade Federation imposed a voluntary ban on its members with respect to the trade in certain spotted cat skins and other furs. At the same time, pressure was mounting for governments to take effective action at the national level. Many countries adopted legislation to improve their control of the wildlife trade, with some establishing partial or even total prohibitions. Primates, spotted cats, tigers, otters, rhinos, elephants, crocodiles, turtles and many others were identified as being potentially at risk as a result of unsustainable trade levels. But it remained the case that there were remarkably few data to show what effect exploitation was having in the wild.

A significant development took place in the US with moves to pass domestic legislation to control imports of wildlife. In 1968, this legislation, in the form of the Dingell Bill, failed to pass. By 1969, however, the pressure was such that its successor, the Endangered Species Conservation Act, became law. This Act sought:

‘to protect the threatened species of the world by banning all imports of such species whether or not they can be taken legally in their country of origin’ (Oryx, 1970).

This approach was to have a profound influence on the development of CITES and marked a fundamental change in what was being attempted. It was the beginning of the move towards the imposition of trade controls that were based on the importing country’s views as to what should be allowed. Little or no account was to be taken of the views of the exporting country. For the US, illegal trade was no longer the sole target. The US government would decide which species were threatened. The major source used to determine what to control (or prohibit) was the IUCN Red Data Books.

The IUCN General Assembly in 1969 and the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972 provided the final impetus for the convention. In March 1973, representatives from over 80 states met at a plenipotentiary conference to agree on the final text. The text had been subject to revisions over a period of years and it represented the consensus, among those taking part, of what was needed and how CITES should operate. It was signed by 21 states. At the same meeting around 1,100 species were placed on the appendices. The appendices reflected fairly closely the species listed in the IUCN Red Data Books. By July 1975, the ten state ratifications needed for CITES to enter into force had been deposited and CITES became a reality.

THE BIRTH OF CITES

The main thrust of the convention was the establishment of a set of import, export and re-export controls on the species listed in the three appendices. Although other factors are included in the text, it is abundantly clear that the principal aim was to create an internationally accepted system for controlling the wildlife trade in such a way as to reduce, as far as possible, the chance of illegal trade occurring. The preamble of the convention states that:

‘international cooperation is essential for the protection of certain species of wild fauna and flora against over-exploitation through international trade’.

As this indicates, CITES was established primarily as a mechanism for international cooperation. However, while there was general agreement both on the underlying goal (to prevent international trade from causing species extinctions) and on the mechanism to achieve this (international cooperation in trade controls) there was a dearth of information as to the scale of the problem and a lack of understanding of how to operate trade controls. As noted in Oryx, ‘when CITES was originally set up and signed, few administrators realized that more than a handful of endangered species were involved’ (Oryx, 1977).

Moreover, few countries had any real experience of how to implement controls of the type required by CITES. Although the US and UK had both been enforcing domestic legislation with similar intent, and many of the exporting countries had laws controlling the export of at least some wildlife, CITES was helping to break new ground in attempting to establish an international mechanism for cooperation in wildlife trade controls. The conservationists who led the initiative knew well enough what the problem was, but they had very little expertise in dealing with it. Of those involved in defining the way in which the convention would operate, there were very few who had any experience at all of designing or implementing trade control measures. Surprisingly, instead of utilizing the existing, well-tried and successful customs network, CITES created an entirely new system based on the designation of ‘Management Authorities’, which were, most frequently, wildlife conservation agencies. But these Management Authorities often had little or no practical experience or expertise in such work.

Another issue concerned the problem of what products were to be covered by the trade controls. This led to the use of the term ‘readily recognizable parts and derivatives’. The use of this vague expression illustrates the lack of any substantial technical basis for what was being attempted. The issue of which wildlife products should be controlled was too difficult to resolve, so it was disguised with a form of wording that allowed each country, at least at first, to include whatever it wished in the controls. A further factor that was to create difficulties at a later stage was the absence of many important countries at the Washington meeting and the representation of many others (particularly those from the developing world) by their diplomatic missions. These missions often had little or no knowledge of, or effective briefing on, the technical issues involved.

The lack of understanding of how to operate a system of trade controls at the inception of CITES left the convention grappling with the issue for many years afterwards. In addition, more fundamental differences were to surface. While the text of the convention implies that illegal trade was the problem and the prevention of illegal trade the solution, others held that the main problem was over-exploitation as a result of increasing demand and that the solution was to eliminate demand and stop the trade, or at least to reduce it. The approach taken by some, especially in the US, suggested that they also believed that legal exploitation in some developing countries should be curbed.

THE FIRST TEN YEARS

During the early years it was quickly realized that the convention required a great deal of interpretation and refinement if it was to work effectively. The debates at the first few meetings showed that a mechanism had been established that was neither clearly defined nor fully understood. One central issue was the criteria that were to be used for including species in the appendices. The original plenipotentiary conference in Washington had not established any criteria. It was only at the first Conference of the Parties in 1976 that explicit criteria were formulated and even these were subsequently regarded as unsatisfactory by many. Some countries found that what they had signed up to was not quite what they had envisaged. Perhaps more importantly, many countries appeared not to take it at all seriously. This was especially true of some of the major importing countries.

The first ten years were spent debating how the convention should operate and which species should be included in the appendices. At first this seemed to be progressing reasonably well, but at the Fourth Conference of the Parties, in Botswana in 1983, the first real stirrings of discontent became apparent. This discontent was typified by Mozambique’s consternation to find that, in order to trade in crocodile skins taken legally from an abundant population, they would have to spend a great deal of money proving that a species which was considered a pest was indeed not ‘endangered’. Furthermore, the response to technical difficulties in trade control was usually to define more complex and difficult regulations. Thus, the convention began to become very complicated and expensive to operate in many countries. This was of great concern both to developing countries with inadequate resources for implementing com...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
• About the Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Background
• 1. CITES: The Vision
• 2. CITES and the Causes of Extinction
• Part II CITES in Practice
• 3. When CITES Works and When it Does Not
• 4. Precaution at the Heart of CITES?
• 5. The Significant Trade Process: Making Appendix II Work
• 6. Who Knows Best? Controversy over Unilateral Stricter Domestic Measures
• Part III Case Studies
• 7. Assessing CITES: Four Case Studies
• 8. Conservation of the Nile Crocodile: Has CITES Helped or Hindered?
• 9. Are All Species Equal? A Comparative Assessment
• 10. Zimbabwe and CITES: Influencing the International Regime
• Part IV The Future of CITES
• 11. CITES and the CBD
• 12. Developing CITES: Making the Convention Work for All of the Parties
• 13. Decentralization, Tenure and Sustainable Use
• 14. Global Regulation and Communal Management
• Part V Endpiece
• 15. The Lesson from Murhenye
• Index