Since 1975, it has imposed global trade prohibitions or restrictions intended to protect species threatened with extinction. It has largely failed. It has also lost the support of many range states, who view CITES and the international non-governmental organisations that egg it on to be neo-colonialists who disrespect their views and violate their sovereignty.
The 19th Conference of the Parties (CoP) in Panama City should very seriously reflect on Tanzania's closing statement at the 18th CoP, on behalf of the Southern African Development Community. In it, these 16 countries – home to many iconic species such as elephant, rhino, lion and giraffe – threatened to withdraw from the treaty altogether.
"Today CITES discards proven, working conservation models in favour of ideologically driven anti-use and anti-trade models," they lamented.
"Such models are dictated by largely Western non-State actors who have no experience with responsibility for, or ownership over wildlife resources."
They argue that CITES operates in violation of its own charter, which recognises that "peoples and states are and should be the best protectors of their own wild fauna and flora", as well as against the injunction of the Convention on Biological Diversity that states have "the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental policies".
CITES's success ought to be measured by whether a listing has indeed protected the species, whether it has stamped out not only legal trade, but also poaching and illicit trade, and whether its management strategy has improved the welfare of the people living with wild species.
By this standard, CITES has a history of serious failure. Wildlife population numbers declined precipitously despite CITES protection, its prohibitions have fuelled illicit trade and made poaching more profitable, and the locals are outraged at high-handed dismissals of their legitimate interests.
It is little wonder, then, that range states, whose people have to live with the listed species, and often rely on them for a living, are rebelling.
Of the approximately 2,210 proposals CITES has considered in its 37-year existence, 63% originate with just four countries: the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Switzerland, and Australia. The organisation is dominated by the Global North, yet most of its decisions affect countries in the Global South.
CITES cannot expect to dictate to countries how their people are to co-exist with species that can be a rich resource, an opportunity cost, and a risk to human welfare. If it does, it must expect local people with local knowledge, traditions and management strategies to be alienated by such rudeness.
Comprehensive reform should be at the top of the CITES CoP19 agenda. Instead, its main press release leading up to the event boasts: 'World Wildlife Conference to rule on stricter trade regulations for 600 CITES species.'
It is steaming ahead, like the colonial empires of old, as if the resounding vote of no confidence issued by southern African countries at CoP18 was just a little awkwardness from uppity natives.
This shows that developing countries have no voice and will always be over-ruled by activists and politicians who play to the sentiments of rich-world elites and believe they know what's best for poor countries.
The neo-colonialism of CITES has to end. Either it must take reform seriously, or range states will, with very good cause, walk away.
CITES pays lip service to local livelihoods
Way back in 2004, after a proposal to list a medicinal plant, Devil's Claw, on Appendix II was rejected, partly on the basis of its potential impact on local livelihoods, CoP13 resolved to recognise 'that implementation of CITES-listing decisions should take into account potential impacts on the livelihoods of the poor'.
Eighteen years later, documents tabled at CoP19 on the issue of livelihoods show that CITES is still gathering new case studies, commissioning reviews, exploring possibilities, engaging indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs), producing short film showcases and reviewing reports.
Its draft Guidance on maximising benefits to Indigenous peoples and local communities from trade in CITES-listed species pointedly notes: 'CITES was established to address the conservation of biodiversity – ensuring international trade in wild animal and plant species is ecologically sustainable – not the livelihoods of people dependent on that trade.'
It also points out that most species regulated by CITES are 'not widespread, abundant and/or highly used relative to many other wild species of commercial value,' seeking to diminish the importance of concerns about local livelihoods.
It is from this basis that it recognises that, 'Nevertheless, the trade in some CITES-listed species may play a significant role in the livelihoods of people at the local level,' and that 'CITES recognises that benefits derived from wildlife use can act as an incentive for conservation.'
This is what local people have been arguing to CITES Parties for decades. The guidance document outlines a complex central-planning technocracy that is supposed to benefit local communities, while excluding 'powerful vested interests'.
The document recognises that the 'challenge in implementation' is proving to be the biggest hurdle to realising benefits to indigenous peoples and local communities. It fails to recognise that a lack of implementation capacity of technocratic schemes of wildlife management might be a perpetual and unresolvable difficulty for poor and middle-income range states.
The draft guidance document is shot through with rhetoric that seeks to impose principles upon local people and governments from a top-down position.
The general sentiment is that CITES listing decisions are non-negotiable, needing only a benevolent authority to, 'organise and consolidate [IPLCs] into cooperatives, associations, and federations' and 'identify viable business opportunities for IPLCs'.
CITES has shown a lack of urgency in addressing long-standing objections from range states in the Global South about local livelihoods.
The draft guidance document, eighteen years in the making, appears patronising, and seems to deny agency to IPLCs by deciding themselves how they and their livelihoods ought to be managed by governments and international agencies to give effect to the dictates of CITES.
CITES has seemingly never been serious about the freedom of people to pursue their livelihoods and manage their own wild plant and animal resources, and at CoP19, it paid lip service and kicked the can down the road again.
*Lapointe, president of the IWMC World Conservation Trust, was secretary-general of CITES from 1982 to 1990
