IUCN Guidelines

Background

In 1997 (CoP10), the Parties, the Secretariat, and relevant non-governmental organizations were urged to develop and support workshops and seminars specifically aimed at enhancing application of the CITES Convention by Scientific Authorities.

Accordingly, IUCN organized two workshops: one in Hong Kong (October 1998), and one in Cambridge (October 1999). The outcome of these workshops was a report titled Guidance for Scientific Authorities: checklist to assist in making non-detriment findings for Appendix II exports.

The aim of the checklist is to help identify the necessary elements for making an NDF, and to further understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of available data. The work was submitted to CoP11 (Gigiri 2000) as an information document(Inf. 11.3), and subsequently published by IUCN (Rosser and Haywood, 2002).)

Checklist

The checklist uses categories of qualitative data and identifies the challenges involved in developing applicable criteria for a wide range of taxa, bearing in mind that it is difficult to extrapolate quantitative data based on a few species for which harvest has been studied.

The table used for plant species includes harvest-related aspects and factors that affect harvest management; it comprises 26 values on a scale from 1 to 5 that can be made into an EXCEL table to automatically obtain a chart.

There is also a table for animal species that includes 26 values on a scale from 1 to 5.

Some aspects for consideration

• In order to determine that offtake is not detrimental to a species’ survival, the Scientific Authority of the State of export will ideally carry out an extensive review of the whole harvest management system.
• The checklist identifies the most important aspects of the harvest management system, and provides the means for data collection.
• The checklist uses categories of qualitative data.
• One of the major strengths of this method is the possibility of visually representing the importance of the factors that affect the likelihood of harvesting being detrimental. This visual representation enables speedy comparisons by species, and by yearly periods. Nonetheless, the checklist is long, and is not always easy to use. The fact that it is all-encompassing (animals and plants) makes it slightly less efficient given that it does not take the specific characteristics of the different groups of taxa into consideration.
• Although these guidelines were never adopted at a Conference of the Parties, the Parties did use them, and it can be said that they were a useful tool – and for many years, the only tool available.