Geneva, 21 October 2024 – Biodiversity is the foundation of human well-being, a healthy planet, and global economic prosperity. It sustains us by providing essential resources like food, medicine, shelter, energy, and clean air and water. Beyond these tangible benefits, biodiversity enriches our lives through recreation, cultural inspiration, and the balance it maintains across ecosystems. Ensuring the sustainability and legality of our use and trade of wild species, a component of biodiversity, is essential for the survival of all life systems on Earth.
From 21 October – 1 November 2024, the Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) will participate in the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD CoP16) in Cali, Colombia, a nation known for its “mega-biodiversity.” A wide variety of wild species listed in the CITES Appendices are endemic to Colombia - from Colombia’s national flower, the Cattleya trianae orchid, to the Cauca Poison Frog (Andinobates bombetes).
Under the theme “Peace with Nature,” CBD CoP16 will be the first global biodiversity conference since the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) in 2022. The KMGBF sets out an ambitious plan for countries to take action in the transformation of societies’ relationship with nature by 2030 and to achieve the shared vision of living in harmony with nature by 2050.
CBD CoP16 is expected to finalize outstanding issues from the previous CoP and related to the KMGBF such as the monitoring framework, the resource mobilization strategy, and the multilateral benefit-sharing mechanism from the use of digital sequence information (DSI), and to take decisions on many other items crucially important for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. 
In 2023, the CITES Secretariat undertook a comparative analysis of the linkages between the CITES Strategic Vision 2021-2030 and the KMGBF. Based on this Mapping of the CITES Strategic Vision against the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the most relevant goals and targets for CITES are:
- Goal A: Human induced extinction of known threatened species is halted, and, by 2050, the extinction rate and risk of all species are reduced tenfold, and the abundance of native wild species is increased to healthy and resilient levels.
- Target 4: Ensure urgent management actions to halt human induced extinction of known threatened species and for the recovery and conservation of species, in particular threatened species, to significantly reduce extinction risk, as well as to maintain and restore the genetic diversity within and between populations of native, wild and domesticated species to maintain their adaptive potential, including through in situ and ex situ conservation and sustainable management practices, and effectively manage human-wildlife interactions to minimize human-wildlife conflict for coexistence.
- Target 5: Ensure that the use, harvesting and trade of wild species is sustainable, safe and legal, preventing overexploitation, minimizing impacts on non-target species and ecosystems, and reducing the risk of pathogen spill-over, applying the ecosystem approach, while respecting and protecting customary sustainable use by indigenous peoples and local communities.
- Target 9: Ensure that the management and use of wild species are sustainable, thereby providing social, economic and environmental benefits for people, especially those in vulnerable situations and those most dependent on biodiversity, including through sustainable biodiversity-based activities, products and services that enhance biodiversity, and protecting and encouraging customary sustainable use by indigenous peoples and local communities.
At CBD CoP16, the CITES Secretariat will follow the negotiations closely and engage stakeholders on the role of CITES in supporting the goals of the KMGBF across various dimensions of sustainable wildlife trade and conservation. These include the interlinkages between sustainable, legal and traceable management of the wildlife trade and environmental, animal and human health, the contributions of legal and sustainable trade to livelihoods, and human-wildlife conflict.
The meeting offers the opportunity to strengthen cooperation across other multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), as well as with other partnerships such as the Collaborative Partnership on Sustainable Wildlife Management (CPW), the Biodiversity Liaison Group (BLG), the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF) and more.
CITES Secretary-General Ivonne Higuero said: “As CITES nears its 50th anniversary of its entry into force, our engagement at CBD CoP16 will focus on reinforcing collaborative partnerships with all partners who have a role to play in the conservation of biodiversity. This meeting will be a unique moment for biodiversity stakeholders to set a more concrete monitoring agenda for achieving a future where both wildlife and the communities that depend on them thrive, and explore new possibilities to ensure conservation benefits reach all corners of our planet.”
Learn more about CBD CoP16 here.
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About CITES
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) was signed on 3 March 1973 and entered into force on 1 July 1975. With 184 Parties (183 countries + the European Union), it remains one of the world's most powerful tools for wildlife conservation through the regulation of international trade in over 40,900 species of wild animals and plants. CITES-listed species are used by people around the world in their daily lives for food, health care, furniture, housing, tourist souvenirs, cosmetics or fashion. CITES seeks to ensure that international trade in such species is sustainable, legal and traceable and contributes to both the livelihoods of the communities that live closest to them and to national economies for a healthy planet and the prosperity of the people in support of UN Sustainable Development Goals.
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