CITES: Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, Appendices I-III, How It Works in India and Issues (UPSC Notes + PYQs)

Why CITES was needed

Wildlife trade is worth billions of dollars a year and ranges from timber and fish to live birds, reptile skins, ivory and medicinal plants. Much of it is legal; some is the main driver of species decline. A 1963 resolution of the IUCN called for an international convention, and the text was agreed in Washington on 3 March 1973 (the date is now World Wildlife Day). CITES came into force on 1 July 1975. It now has about 185 parties, including the European Union, and covers more than 40,000 species, the large majority of them plants. The Secretariat is in Geneva and is administered by UNEP.

CITES regulates only international trade. It does not deal with habitat loss or domestic trade, and it is not self-executing: each party must pass its own law to apply it.

The three Appendices

Changes to Appendices I and II are made by a two-thirds vote at the Conference of the Parties (CoP), held roughly every three years. A party can enter a “reservation” and treat itself as a non-party for a particular listing.

How a CITES permit works

Each party must name at least one Management Authority, which issues permits, and one Scientific Authority, which advises whether trade will harm the species. Customs checks the permit at the border; a shipment without one is seized. For Appendix II species, the export permit carries a non-detriment finding and confirmation that the specimen was legally obtained. Captive-bred animals and artificially propagated plants are handled through simpler certificates, and registered captive-breeding operations can trade even some Appendix I species.

India and CITES

India became a party in 1976. The Wildlife (Protection) Amendment Act, 2022 was passed mainly to implement CITES properly. It:

• added a chapter on CITES and named the Management Authority (the Director of Wildlife Preservation in MoEFCC) and Scientific Authorities;
• created a new Schedule IV for species listed in the CITES Appendices;
• rationalised the schedules from six to four (two for animals by protection level, one for plants, one for CITES species);
• required people holding live specimens of scheduled animals to register them;
• raised penalties.

The Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB), a statutory body set up in 2007, coordinates enforcement with customs, police and the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence. The Directorate General of Foreign Trade bans export of most wild species under the export-import policy.

India has used CoPs actively. At CoP18 (Geneva, 2019) its proposals moved the smooth-coated otter, the small-clawed otter and the Indian star tortoise to Appendix I. At CoP19 (Panama, 2022) India won relief for Dalbergia sissoo (shisham) products, which had been hurting handicraft exporters from places such as Saharanpur.

Major decisions over the years

• 1989: African elephant moved to Appendix I; a global ivory trade ban followed, with limited one-off sales later allowed for some southern African stocks.
• 2016 (CoP17, Johannesburg): all eight pangolin species moved to Appendix I; pangolins are the most trafficked mammals.
• 2013 onwards: several commercially fished sharks and rays listed in Appendix II, bringing ocean fisheries into CITES.
• 2022 (CoP19): large listings of sharks (requiem sharks) and tropical timbers.
• 2025 (CoP20, Samarkand): the first CoP held in Central Asia.

Issues

• Online and social-media trade is hard to police, as are courier parcels.
• Laundering of wild-caught animals as “captive bred”.
• Weak capacity in many source countries to make scientific non-detriment findings.
• Exotic pet trade: many exotic species were outside Indian law until 2022, and the government ran a voluntary disclosure scheme in 2020-21.
• Debate between total bans and regulated, community-based sustainable use (southern African states argue the latter).
• Livelihoods: listings can hurt traders and artisans, as the shisham case showed.

Way forward

Better data sharing among customs, WCCB and other countries; DNA and isotope testing to tell wild from captive specimens; working with e-commerce firms; using CITES with the CBD and the Convention on Migratory Species; and supporting local communities so that conservation brings income rather than loss.

PYQ trend

Prelims asks the nature of TRAFFIC (2017), Wildlife Protection Act schedules and provisions (2017, 2020, 2022), and which conventions cover which issues. Expect questions on Appendices and India’s 2022 amendment.

CITES: UPSC angle

CITES UPSC PYQs (Prelims)

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Mains PYQs on this topic

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Image: Giles Laurent, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0