International conservation treaties, poverty and development: The case of CITES

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) aims to protect wild species from the threat posed by international trade. While the original treaty does not acknowledge a positive role for trade, the Parties to CITES have subsequently developed a range of trade measures that implicitly recognise that a regulated trade can have conservation benefits. Nevertheless, there is still considerable uncertainty about the effectiveness of trade measures as a conservation tool, and, in the CITES context, their potential for poverty reduction remains largely unexplored.