Conclusions and recommendations

Policing international trade in endangered species is a complex task, involving action and cooperation between governmental and non-governmental stakeholders at all levels, both between states and within states. At the centre is CITES. In the absence of an international wildlife law enforcement agency, the CITES compliance system is the key to ensuring that parties implement and enforce the Convention. Following the success of the Montreal Protocol’s non-compliance procedure, modern regulatory MEAs now mandate the negotiation of specific procedures and mechanisms to induce compliance and deal with non-compliance. The most detailed to date can be found in the compliance system agreed under the Kyoto Protocol, the most complicated of any MEA. But CITES pre-dates these developments. There is no provision in the Convention for negotiating procedures and mechanisms to address non-compliance. Instead its compliance system has evolved through ‘soft law’ and practice over nearly three decades on the basis of broad provisions, mandating:

parties to report annually on CITES trade and biennially on implementation and enforcement measures;

the Secretariat to review national reports, communicate problems on implementation to parties and make recommendations;

parties to respond with remedial action and report to the COP;

the COP to review parties’ responses and make recommendations. ¹