IUCN/TRAFFIC analyses of the proposals to amend the CITES appendices at the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties

CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) was opened for signature in Washington DC on 3rd March 1973, and to date has 182 Parties from across the world. If CITES is to remain a credible instrument for conserving species affected by trade, the decisions of the Parties must be based on the best available scientific and technical information. Recognizing this, IUCN and TRAFFIC have undertaken technical reviews of the proposals to amend the CITES Appendices. The Analyses - as these technical reviews are known - aim to provide as objective an assessment as possible of each amendment proposal against the requirements of the Convention as laid out in the listing criteria elaborated in Resolution Conf. 9.24 (Rev. CoP16) and other relevant Resolutions and Decisions. Unfortunately, due to a challenging fundraising environment and the high number of proposals, the funds necessary to conduct the Analyses and present them in the same manner as for previous Conference of the Parties (CoPs), were not found. Therefore, instead of producing the highly-detailed summary section and accompanying table for each proposal as we have done in previous years, for CoP17 we have instead produced a summary section for every proposal.