Secretary-General's statements

In every corner of the world, wild plants and animals are under intense pressure as a result of habitat destruction, climate change, over-exploitation and illegal trade, which is taking place on an industrial scale. This is why, at the start of CITES #CoP17, I said the Johannesburg World Wildlife Conference was ‘critical’ to securing the future of wildlife.

CITES CoP17 - Ministerial Lekgotla - 23 September 2016, Johannesburg Address by John E. Scanlon, Secretary-General CITES ‘CITES and its role in advancing the achievement of the SDGs through legal and sustainable trade and tackling illegal trade in wildlife’ Thank you Minister Molewa. Today’s Ministerial High Level Event is the largest such gathering in the history of CITES, and the CoP to start tomorrow is the largest and busiest meeting in the history of the Convention. It is clear that everyone wants to be right here in Johannesburg!

Talk of prohibiting, preventing and countering corruption must take centre stage when signatories to the Cites treaty on regulating the international trade in wildlife meet in Johannesburg this weekend. The world is witnessing an unprecedented surge in wildlife trafficking that is stealing the irreplaceable natural wealth of countries, greatly hindering development, paralysing efforts to eradicate poverty, and undermining conservation efforts. This illicit trade in wildlife is well organised, transnational and happening across every region. As countries prepare to meet in Johannesburgthis weekend for the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to Cites (CoP17), there is increasing recognition that to curb the global surge in wildlife trafficking we must counter the corrosive corruption that enables it.

Consumers and collectors want sturgeon caviar, snakeskin bags, shark meat and fins, wild snowdrop bulbs, precious rosewood furniture, and quality agarwood oil, as well as rare birds, reptiles, cacti and orchids. But they rarely stop to think about their origins. There are now over seven billion people consuming biodiversity every day in the form of medicines, food, clothing, furniture, perfumes and luxury goods. Demand for products drawn from nature is increasing, and with it pressure is growing on some of our wildlife species.