The International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) and the CITES Secretariats are collaborating on a programme of activities aimed at ensuring that international trade in CITES-listed timber species is consistent with their sustainable management and conservation. Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, the European Commission and the private sector are funding this capacity-building project and ITTO administers their contributions.
Range States of tree species included in CITES Appendix II face challenges to implement the requirements associated with this Appendix. The project goals are therefore to help these countries strengthen their capacities to make non-detriment findings, enhance national legislation and enforcement, and generally ensure the effective implementation of CITES.
At the 14th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES (The Hague, 2007), the United States of America presented a document on Cooperation between CITES and ITTO regarding trade in tropical timber (document CoP14 Doc. 18.2). The discussions that ensued resulted in the adoption of Resolution Conf. 14.4 on Cooperation between CITES and ITTO regarding trade in tropical timber, which provides a framework for the cooperation between the two organizations.
The ITTO and CITES Secretariats have since presented the following progress reports on their joint work:
- Progress report on the joint ITTO-CITES timber project: first regional meeting (see document PC17 Doc. 16.2)
- Progress report on the joint ITTO-CITES timber project (see document PC18 Doc. 13.2)
In 2012, the ITTO-CITES programme launched a report entitled Tracking sustainability: review of electronic and semi-electronic timber tracking technologies which provides Parties with a compendium of existing timber tracking technologies with detailed information on the features of different systems that are becoming widely available in the forest sector.
Information on activities at the national level, outputs, the programme newsletter and the contact details of the technical team can be found at the following website in the three working languages: http://www.itto.int/cites_programme
ITTO-CITES newsletter Issue Number 2-7 September 2014 - Programme for implementing CITES listings of tropical tree species