UNEP’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) will be showcasing plans for a new on-line portal at the 16th Meeting of the Conference of Parties to CITES (CoP) in Thailand from 3–14 March. The new integrated species information platform, known as Species+, will enable Parties to search CITES species lists and databases of legal trade in CITES-listed species more quickly and interactively than ever before, when complete.


UNEP-WCMC has provided information and support to CITES for more than 30 years. The CITES Trade Database, managed by UNEP-WCMC, records all reported legal trade in species listed in CITES Appendices I and II and now holds 13 million trade records. The Centre also developed and manages the UNEP-WCMC CITES Species Database, where information on the nomenclature, distribution, and trade regulations of CITES-listed species is kept up-to-date for daily use by Parties who are responsible for issuing trade permits.


Marking CITES’ 40th anniversary, UNEP-WCMC and the CITES Secretariat will hold a side event at 12.30pm on 6 March entitled “New electronic tools for sustainable and legal trade in CITES-listed species” at which the Vision for the new portal will be launched. Species+ will eventually bring together the CITES Species and Trade Databases into a faster, more-easily searchable on-line portal capable of providing automatic updates to national database systems.


Phase I of the project will deliver a database-driven checklist and a beta version will be demonstrated at the side-event. For the first time, Parties will be able to search online by country, scientific or common name, and Appendix. Customised outputs from the CITES checklist can also be generated for download – for example a list of CITES species that occur within a country, a list of common names, or a list of mammals found in Appendix I. UNEP-WCMC will also demonstrate an iPad App that allows instant updates of changes in species listings.

Further phases of the project are proposed to integrated the trade data holdings and develop computer-to-computer links capable of automatically updating each Party’s CITES species databases whenever verified changes are made to the central database. The 178 Parties to the Convention will no longer need to independently update their systems, saving time and money, and ensuring consistency across countries.

To draw out lessons from 35 years of trade data, UNEP-WCMC carried out overview analyses of international trade in Appendix I and II species and regional trade trends. This work was generously supported by the CITES Secretariat (through European Union funds), the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) and the New Zealand Department of Conservation. The Reports, key points of these snapshot trade analyses – and perspectives on the Convention at 40 from invited guest authors – are presented on the UNEP-WCMC species website and summarised in a brochure (CITES Trade – A Global Analysis to Inform Future Trade Management) that will be distributed at the CoP.

UNEP-WCMC also contributed to development of the CITES and Livelihoods Toolkit, which will be presented at a side event, and Kelly Malsch, Senior Programme Officer will speak at an e-permitting side event, both on 11 March.

 

Supplementary materials