What a welcoming phrase. It resonates with inclusiveness, protectiveness and amity on a grand scale. It weighs heavily with an invocation of responsibility to inheritance – to our inheritance, as a global community that produces life in our own name. It calls our greater selves to a single concern and a singular cause. While biodiversity conservation treaties and protection plans abound, however, we are currently in the throes of a mass-extinction crisis. More than 17,000 plants and animal species are threatened because of human activity, and this number is set to increase sharply as climate change continues, rivaling past mass extinctions.3 The Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (‘CITES’), and the Convention on Biological Diversity (‘CBD’) are two key legally binding instruments that purport to preserve animal life. The mechanisms they establish, however, fall far short of their promises, failing against any measure to halt large-scale biodiversity loss.4 ‘Lack of political will’ is usually cited as the greatest obstacle to the protection of biodiversity and endangered species, and in a recent circular the CBD Conference of the Parties cites lack of ‘ownership’, resources, technical capacity, measur able targets, monitoring and implementation as additional reasons for failure.5