A look at the 34th meeting of the CITES Animals Committee (Geneva, 13–17 July 2026) through the lens of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’s Target 5.
GBF Target 5
Target 5 of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) aims to ensure that the “use, harvesting and trade of wild species is sustainable, safe and legal.” Both wild species and the people who depend on them are to be protected. This is to be done through preventing overexploitation, minimising impacts on non-target species and ecosystems, and reducing the risk of pathogen spillover. With its emphasis on wild species trade, CITES is a key multilateral framework for delivering this target.
That raises a natural question for anyone tracking implementation: does the day-to-day technical work under CITES both at the multilateral level and the national level actually advance Target 5? The 34th meeting of the Animals Committee (AC34) offers a useful test case because its agenda and working documents are dense with exactly the kind of decisions Target 5 is meant to govern. However, is there policy coherence between AC34 and Target 5?
No explicit reference at AC34
Search AC34’s documents for “Target 5” or “Global Biodiversity Framework” and you will not find it. Or at least I have not found it yet. That is probably not an oversight, however, as CITES and the CBD are separate treaties with separate secretariats, separate decision-making processes, and even their own technical terminology. CITES, for example, speaks in terms of Non-Detriment Findings (NDFs), the Review of Significant Trade (RST), and Periodic Review. This is not the language of GBF Target 5 or the other GBF Targets or even the CBD. Thus, the absence of a reference to Target 5, does not mean that its substance is absent in AC34.
Links to Target 5 in AC34
Sustainable. This is where AC34’s work links most directly to Target 5. The Review of Significant Trade process (AC34 Doc. 13.1) is essentially an on-gong, species-by-species audit of whether current offtake is sustainable. Recurring cases such as the West African scorpion (Pandinus imperator) in Togo, the Russian tortoise (Testudo horsfieldii) in Uzbekistan, or the European eel (Anguilla Anguilla) in Tunisia and Algeria are all held to the same standard. Any quota increases must be shown to be “conservative, based on estimates of sustainable offtake that make use of best available scientific information.” This is Target 5’s sustainability criterion operationalised at the level of individual CITES trade permits. The Periodic Review of Appendix-listed species (AC34 Doc. 43) performs a similar function retrospectively, checking whether existing listings still reflect the conservation status of the species.
Safe. Agenda item 9, on the role of CITES in reducing the risk of future zoonotic disease emerging from wildlife trade directly addresses Target 5’s safe criterion, with pathogen spillover as a concern. This item responds to CoP20 Decisions 20.10 and 20.11 and shows CITES beginning to formally engage with a dimension of Target 5 that goes beyond its traditional focus on ensuring that trade is sustainable and legal.
Legal. The Review of Significant Trade’s trade-suspension mechanism is CITES’s compliance backstop — cases like two butterflies (Ornithoptera priamus and Ornithoptera victoriae) and a skink (Corucia zebrata) from the Solomon Islands have been under suspension for quite some time, because legal and sustainable sourcing could not be confirmed. Agenda item 16 on the illegal trade in Madagascar’s tortoises and freshwater turtles also directly addresses the legal criterion of Target 5.
Linked but not in sync
Notably, AC34 is not actually deciding anything in terms of GBF implementation. The most direct institutional link is perhaps the CITES response to the IPBES Sustainable Use of Wild Species Assessment, adopted as CoP20 Decisions 20.15 and 20.16. However, this is being overseen by the Standing Committee, not the Animals Committee. AC34’s role is limited to naming its representatives to an intersessional working group. In other words, the one item that would most obviously connect the AC’s technical work to Target 5 is deferred to a working group.
Further, Target 5 covers safety and legality alongside sustainability, but AC34’s institutional focus is still overwhelmingly focused on non-detriment, i.e., sustainably. The zoonotic disease agenda item is fresh territory for the AC. Ecosystem and non-target-species impacts — also highlighted in Target 5 — surface only obliquely. Further, regarding people, the AC is not yet linked to GBF Target 9 which aims for people to benefit from the sustainable management and use of wild species.
Enhancing policy coherence
SDG Target 17.14 calls on governments to “enhance policy coherence for sustainable development.” The good news is that AC34 supports GBF Target 5 in substance, though not in name. Its core recurring functions are, in effect, transaction-level enforcement of the sustainable trade called for by Target 5. Its trade measures (trade suspensions, illegal-trade agenda items) support legal trade as also called for by Target 5. The “safe” criterion is, however, only beginning to be addressed. The clearest formal pathway to GBF Target 5 is probably through the IPBES sustainable use assessment, but it is not certain that this will lead to any concrete changes the way CITES functions. Through the work of AC34 supports Target 5, it is not yet fully aligned with its implementation.
By Francis Vorhies
Also see: CITES AC34 & PC28 – Earthmind