3. Underlying Issues

3.3 - Implementation Difficulties

The proposed CITES listing of the three shark species raises a number of fundamental issues regarding the role and scope of CITES in natural resource management. In this specific case, it also raises questions about the ability of the Parties to CITES to allocate the resources that may be needed to adequately implement the controls, and whether these resources, in the end, will contribute to conservation.

Whilst a CITES listing of shark species would offer a means of restricting and monitoring trade, it would also entail a number of practical difficulties. In the following two sections, we address two key questions (1) is a CITES listing the most effective way to manage and conserve shark populations?, and (2) what other mechanism(s) would be appropriate?

(i). Advantages of CITES listing to the Species and Parties

CITES is an established organisation with a sound basis in international law, that has experience at monitoring international trade at the species level. It is argued that the lack of such data currently constrains conservation and management efforts with sharks (C. maximus proposal). Thus CITES listing could potentially provide better quantitative data on sharks in trade: species, products, volumes, countries of origin, imports, re-exports. It is also argued that it could provide improved controls for protecting threatened shark species from overexploitation. The C. maximus proposal suggests that listing on Appendix II will help to implement, in part, the FAO International Plan of Action for the Conservation and Management of Sharks (see below).

(ii) Disadvantages of CITES listing to the Species and Parties

It may equally be argued that the monitoring required, at the level of resolution sought, is well beyond anything CITES has achieved in the past. A CITES listing would not reduce by-catch, incidental capture, entanglements in safety nets, recreational sports fishing, fisheries targeting national consumption (i.e. non-traded resources), nor the fishing impacts on other species on which sharks may be dependent (such as tuna). For example, the major threatening factor for R. typus appear to be harvests by Indian and Taiwanese fisheries for local consumption, whilst for C. carcharias, it is by-catch and sports fishing.

In neither of these two cases is international trade identified as a major threatening process involved in the inferred population declines or inferred increased risks of extinction. Similarly, if loss or deterioration of critical habitats is involved in population declines, legislation restricting use and trade may have little effect (SSG 1996).

Against these obvious possibilities that CITES listing may do little to assist conservation, it certainly will require virtually all Parties to allocate resources to monitoring trade in shark products. In the case of fishing nations who export shark products, and may catch these species from time to time, the onus will clearly be on them to ensure the listed species, or products derived from them, are not exported with the other species. There are clearly methods that can be developed for doing this, but the human resource cost and the cost of technologies such as DNA analyses can be expected to be very significant indeed.

CITES controls will favour exporters of whole bodies rather than of processed meat, fins, cartilage, teeth, oil or any other product that cannot be readily identified. In the case of Appendix II listing, any country wishing to export legally will be required to establish a non-detriment finding in accordance with Article IV2(c) of the convention, which will at best be problematic to implement. Others may be encouraged to lodge reservations in accordance with Article XXIII of the Convention, if there is doubt about their ability to comply with implementation requirements.