United States On International Trade - 1223 Words

The CITES is an international agreement that entered in force the 1st of July 1975. It is designed to prevent any threat, caused by international trade, towards the survival of specimens of wild animals and plants. The global scale of the trading network nowadays imposes this convention to have an international scope, thus to include 181 parties protecting more than 35,000 species This treaty has 2 main purposes: it aims to improve the working of the Convention, also, ensure that CITES policy developments are mutually supportive of international environmental priorities and new international initiatives. The species included in this convention are sorted into three appendices: Appendix I includes species threatened with extinction and†¦show more content†¦There are also more broad metrics like the Living Planet Index (measure of biodiversity). A difficulty to address this problem A convention such as CITES can impose total trade bans on certain species. While the reason is environmentally sound, politicians don’t always agree. The reason behind this are the commercial and economic benefits that countries get out of specific trades. For instance, the main challenge in 2013 was to add to the CITES Appendix II several species of sharks. This proposal faced a strong resistance from China, Japan and their allies, where the shark fin trade is a tradition, causing horrific changes in the population of these species. The same problem happened in 2013 during the CoP16 when Canada rejected the decision to enlist the Polar Bear in the Appendix I, due to its impact on the lives of the Inuit  Cooney, R., Abensperg-Traun, M., (2013) . Evaluating the success This agreement has been at the origin of some positive movements and actions, however, it has also showed weaknesses in terms of policy and