WWF not only works for a legal and sustainable wildlife trade by funding and supporting a variety of initiatives in countries that produce or consume wildlife products. We also work with the UK government – and through the global WWF Network – to influence international policy on conservation issues affecting some of the world’s most important species.
We make sure our voice is heard at two important policy bodies: the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the International Whaling Commission (IWC).
CITES
CITES is an international agreement, which regulates the trade in endangered wild animals and plants to help ensure the survival of wild species.
WWF has been a positive force in CITES since the treaty came into force in 1975. We actively promote stronger enforcement of the treaty for the benefit of wildlife conservation.
The most recent meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES (CoP14), where the member countries (now numbering 173) gather to make decisions, took place in June 2007 in the Netherlands:
* This was the first CoP to be held in the EU, which provided an opportunity to highlight the significant achievements of the EU in reducing illegal wildlife trade.
* The conference also emphasised how reducing illegal wildlife trade can be enhanced through improved collaboration between countries.
* WWF called on member countries to take strong action to save tigers from extinction in the wild, drew attention to the need to control illegal domestic ivory markets, and made recommendations for trade restrictions on a number of other species.
In some respects, the conference was a success. Key decisions were taken on eels, sawfishes, elephants and tigers that may help to safeguard their future. But it is a serious concern that countries missed the opportunity to help the conservation of several commercially-traded species, including tropical timber species, spiny dogfish, porbeagle sharks, and pink and red corals.
WWF will continue to lobby for the conservation of a variety of important species that we believe require further protection from over-exploitation. The next CITES CoP meeting takes place in Qatar in January 2010.
Find out more about our CITES work (including our positions on issues at CITES meetings)
IWC
The IWC was set up in 1946 under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling to address the overexploitation of whale species.
Over recent decades, WWF believes the IWC has taken some encouraging steps in changing its emphasis from governing the whaling industry towards conserving and studying whales.
However, Japan, Norway and Iceland are still whaling even though an international moratorium on commercial whaling has been in place since 1986. All three countries are exploiting loopholes in the convention to kill nearly 2,000 whales each year.
WWF is working with governments to promote the conservation of all cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises), and to ensure that commercial exploitation never again threatens any species of whale. At the most recent general meeting of the IWC, which took place in Chile in June 2008, WWF welcomed an agreement to examine how the IWC can play a part in whale conservation in the future. However, we are concerned that the process might take too long to save some threatened whale and dolphin species.
