CATALYSING IMPACT ON WILDLIFE TRADE

TRAFFIC’s Conservation Programme 2017 - 2022 was designed to achieve our 2022 Conservation Goal:

to help reduce the pressure of illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade on biodiversity and enhance the benefits to wildlife conservation and human well-being that derive from trade at sustainable levels.

The Programme was organised in two workstreams: a ‘Green’ workstream to enhance benefits from sustainable and legal wildlife trade and a ‘Red’ workstream to reduce illegal wildlife trade (IWT). Within these workstreams, articulation of TRAFFIC’s work along the ‘Evidence to Influence’ approach ensured effective use of the important levers of change to achieve positive systemic change: actions targeted to inter-governmental agreements, governments, businesses, and individuals (consumers).

Here we evaluate the performance towards achieving the Programme Results (measuring Programme Outcomes), present a selection of achievements, and assess the progress against 2022 Targets and indicators, which measure the ambition of the Programme impact (changes in wildlife trade over time). The story map concludes with a glance forward to what is expected as TRAFFIC ventures into a new Strategy to 2030.

Please note that you can click into images and figures to zoom in.

The final year of TRAFFIC’s five-year Programme cycle concluded at the end of June 2022. During this time, TRAFFIC led or supported the implementation of over 200 wildlife-trade-related projects. TRAFFIC staff delivered a wide range of significant achievements during these five years while simultaneously undergoing significant organisational change and growth. 

Collective policy action by governments through international conventions and agreements to guide and reinforce individual national actions.

Implementation action by governments designing, governing, and enforcing effective regulation and management systems

Action by businesses and public procurement agencies to use sustainability standards and traceability systems for wildlife product sourcing and to avoid involvement in illicit trade.

Action by wildlife consumers to choose sustainably and legally sourced products and avoid illicit goods.

TRAFFIC’s ambition for contributing to global change in wildlife trade flows is captured by a set of Targets and indicators closely related to our interventions. These reflect not only TRAFFIC’s work, but decisions by governments, companies, wildlife harvesters and traders, and individual consumers, globally. Most of the targets have a baseline year of 2012, and are:

1.  Illegal trade in elephant products reduced by 50% 
2.  Illegal trade in rhino products reduced by 50% 
3.  Illegal trade in tiger products reduced by 50% 
4.  Risk of overexploitation reduced for 30% of “high-risk” shark stocks in trade 
5.  FairWild Standard for sustainable and equitable sourcing of wild plant products is applied to trade in a minimum of 50 species, a minimum of 20 countries and a minimum of 50 companies in the pharmaceutical, food and cosmetics sectors. 

As we look to the future, we recognise that the landscape for our work is significantly shifting. TRAFFIC has used the final year of the 2017-2022 Programme cycle to review our role in the coming decade.

During the coming decade, we intend to align our work with the ambitious long-term vision of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework that was endorsed in December 2022 – a world living in harmony with nature where biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored, and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet, and delivering benefits essential for all people.

To achieve this vision, we will refocus TRAFFIC’s mission to give stronger emphasis to core concepts of sustainability, empowerment, and benefits sharing, in addition to reducing threats to conservation.

Ensure that trade in wild species is legal and sustainable for the benefit of the planet and people.  

 As we scale up action in our new priority areas of work, we will adjust how we work in response to changes in the world and draw on lessons learned from our previous strategy. We will focus on six key internal levers for accelerating impact:

With the new Programme cycle already in motion, TRAFFIC’s 2030 Strategy will be launched by the start of 2023 and carry us through the next seven years towards achieving an even greater impact on wildlife trade.