Unsustainable wildlife use and trade imperils thousands of species and is a major contributor towards current unprecedented rates of global biodiversity loss. Establishing effective controls on wildlife trade is an urgent priority, however this is hindered by rapidly evolving markets, opaque supply chains, and inadequate resources for enforcement.
This new collaboration, led by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), will focus on filling the critical gap in indicators of unsustainable and sustainable wildlife use and trade. This will be done by using cutting-edge approaches to integrate big data from social media, trade statistics, and biodiversity databases. The aim is to develop novel and transformative wildlife use and trade indicators and standardised monitoring frameworks, which will greatly enhance global capacity and efforts to ensure that trade in wildlife at different scales is sustainable.
“This is an exciting project. We have an opportunity to develop novel indicators to help track progress towards globally agreed targets relating to the (un)sustainable use and trade of wildlife.”
Dr Dan Challender (Department of Biology)
Researchers in the Oxford team will contribute to developing new frameworks and indicators and will then apply these to answer questions such as to what extent are conservation efforts mitigating the threat to species from overexploitation for international trade? Oxford researchers will also play a role in taking the developed indicators to policymakers in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to support their adoption.
Oxford lead on the project Dr Dan Challender (Department of Biology) commented: ‘This is an exciting project. We have an opportunity to develop novel indicators to help the world’s government track progress towards globally agreed targets and goals relating to the (un)sustainable use and trade of wildlife. We are looking forward to working with Parties to the CBD and CITES to develop the indicators that are most needed.’
“Increasing urban demand for wildlife products has led to unsustainable levels of hunting… Accessible knowledge on wildlife populations and wildlife use and trade are crucial for developing effective sustainable management approaches.”
Dr Lauren Coad (Department of Biology and CIFOR-ICRAF)
The project builds on Oxford’s expertise in using interdisciplinary approaches to understand threats to wildlife, design effective wildlife trade interventions, and evaluate actions. This includes research to understand how many species are likely threatened by international trade, and the recent demonstration that patent data could provide a novel means to identify future commercial trends associated with the overharvesting of wildlife for trade.
Dr Lauren Coad (Department of Biology and CIFOR-ICRAF) said: ‘Wildlife provides a crucial source of food and income for many rural communities across the globe. However, increasing urban demand for wildlife products has led to unsustainable levels of hunting, threatening numerous species and leading to changes in ecosystem function. This has negative impacts on wildlife survival, local cultures, and food security. Accessible knowledge on wildlife populations and wildlife use and trade are crucial for developing effective sustainable management approaches at the local to international levels.”
The Innovation Window program was launched by the GEF to support and help road-test novel approaches, tools, and business models for complex problems related to biodiversity, climate change, pollution, and inter-related areas, engaging new and varied partners.
The seven winning projects were chosen from an initial pool of 128 applications and cover a wide range of issues in finance, behaviour change, systems transformation, technology, and tools.
The partners in this project are IUCN (lead), University of Oxford, University of Helsinki, University of Cambridge, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), United Nations Environment Programme-World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), Zoological Society of London (ZSL), and TRAFFIC.
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