3 - The Implementation of CITES in Norway: A Longitudinal Approach to the Assessment of Enforcement from a Species Justice Perspective

Summary

Introduction

In 2010, I began research on wildlife trafficking (WLT) and its law enforcement. The focus herein is on the trafficking in live animals and products of their bodies – species that are listed in the appendices of CITES, and how this convention has been implemented and enforced in Norway. In 2020, I did follow-up research with new data collection under the umbrella of the CRIMEANTHROP [Criminal Justice, Wildlife Conservation and Animal Rights in the Anthropocene] project. In this chapter I concentrate on the illegal trade, although I acknowledge that the legal trade may be equally harmful to the animal victims who are abducted (Sollund 2011) or killed in their habitats and deprived of the life to which they were entitled (Sollund 2019).

CITES regulates wildlife trade and there are currently 183 parties – nation states, as well as the EU as one partner – to the convention. It is urgent to underline that the mandate of CITES is not to put an end to wildlife trade. It is a trade convention that regulates which species are allowed in trade, and which are not. CITES does not protect animals from trade before their species is threatened with extinction. CITES also has little concern for the welfare of individual animals who are victims of trade (Múla Arribas 2015; Goyes and Sollund 2016; Sollund 2019; Wyatt et al 2022), and partial protection is awarded only to species that are listed on the CITES appendices. Currently 6,610 species of animals and 34,310 species of plants have some protection in CITES. Because most species are not subject to any trade regulation, species may become extinct without ever being listed or even discovered (for example, Frank and Wilcove 2019). In regards to its ability to protect species from extinction, this is a weakness. But CITES is also criticized for other reasons, for example in regards to its capacity to create a reliable overview of the trade in species it is supposed to protect, and in terms of animal welfare (Reeve 2014; Goyes and Sollund 2016; Sollund 2019; Wyatt 2021).