How Valid Is The Sustainable Use Model?
The ‘sustainable use’ of wild species is the biodiversity equivalent to ‘net zero’ for the climate crisis, a PR exercise that allows the continued industrial extraction of wild species for profit.
The accepted definition of sustainable use is, “Sustainable use means the use of components of biological diversity in a way and at a rate that does not lead to the long-term decline of biological diversity, thereby maintaining its potential to meet the needs and aspirations of present and future generations”, which comes from the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) 1992. In reality, decades of evidence exists of the long term decline in biodiversity. It is obvious that species won’t be around to ‘meet the needs and aspirations of future generations’, but this is being conveniently ignored to satisfy the need for ‘economic growth’, including growth under the guise of ‘global development aid’, namely Aid for Trade.
The sustainable use model is the go-to excuse to allow the unchecked extraction of everything. A plethora of stakeholders, from business to government, IGOs to NGOs promote the sustainable use model. The big problem is that this is an act of faith, because conservation scientists are not actively publishing any proof that any of this extraction is sustainable. In the last few years a handful of meta-analyses have been undertaken. In every case the sustainable use model (namely trade) was found to have either a large negative effect on the species traded or the impact was ‘inconclusive’ due to a lack of data and studies.
In relation to the global trade in endangered species, we lack any transparent evidence that the sustainable use model is working to conserve endangered species. Defenders of the model endlessly cite crocodiles and vicunas, but CITES lists nearly 40,000+ species, not just those two. Evidence needs to be systemic, comprehensive and independently verifiable, none of which is currently the case.
When attending CITES CoP 18 we observed that trade analytics for the legal trade in endangered species are not discussed. Participants talk about the sustainable use model as a way to conserve species, but no one actually acknowledges that this proof doesn’t exist. It feels very much like the situation highlighted by Dutch historian Rutger Bregman when he was invited to attend the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos; whilst there he observed that there was only one panel at Davos dedicated to the topic of tax avoidance, “It feels like I’m at a firefighters’ conference and no one’s allowed to speak about water”.
At a CITES Conference of the Parties (CoP), you are at a trade conference that doesn’t talk about legal trade, trade analytics or the commercial value of trade. More broadly sustainable use is only spoken about in terms of ‘principles’, ‘guidelines’ and ‘recommendations’ that business and industry use as the basis for self-regulation. These are closer to aspirations used for marketing purposes (some would say ‘greenwashing’ of the trade) rather than genuine regulation and enforcement to ensure the current and future wellbeing of the wild cohort and the ecosystem in which it lives. We explored this disconnect between what is discussed and what should be discussed in the articles 2022 Inaugural Trade Report That Isn’t A Trade Report, CITES – The Trade System That Doesn’t Know What It Doesn’t Know and the Mechanisms of Trade.
It has only been in the last couple of years that conservation scientists have started to openly state that the legal trade is at least 10 times higher in value than the illegal trade, and, despite this, very little good quality, complete data exists to assess whether the legal wildlife trade in any species is sustainable or not.
2020 Debunking Sustainable Use Report
The publication of the 2019 IPBES Report has resulted in no change to the unrelenting focus on ‘sustainable use’ of wildlife. Even COVID-19 doesn’t seem to have been enough for the industries, businesses and governments to accept that the rate and scale of extraction is potentially unsafe, let alone unstatutable. They were too desperate to nudge us back into pre-pandemic consumption patterns and business-as-usual to learn. The scale of the inertia is quite staggering.
Our Debunking Sustainable Use Report 2020 focuses on the international trade in endangered wildlife and how the lack of effective regulation under CITES and the tacit tolerance of the illegal wildlife trade combine to ridicule any claims of sustainability.
The premise of the ‘sustainable use’ starts from a fundamentally flawed assumption – that there can be a win-win-win scenario between economic, ecological and social benefits. Yet, since the 1970s the idea of shareholder primacy – where the prime responsibility of business is to increase profits and maximise returns to shareholders – has become evermore entrenched. The scale of destruction as a result of shareholder primacy triggered a 30+ year debate – Shareholder Capitalism v. Stakeholder Capitalism. Collectively we are no nearer to stakeholder capitalism.
The sustainable use model and shareholder primacy are incompatible.
In the Debunking Sustainable Use Report, we provide short, medium and long term solutions to reversing the present trends, which are currently driving the catastrophic declines in biodiversity.
The Latest (Lack Of) Evidence On The Sustainable Use Model
The commodification of nature can’t be undone without undermining a basic tenet of capitalism – unlimited economic growth. As long ago as 1968, the Club of Rome was founded to look at the problems of humankind, including environmental deterioration. The club’s first report, Limits to Growth, published in 1972 concluded that growth of production and consumption could not continue indefinitely on a limited planet. Despite the mounting evidence to the contrary, the myth of inexhaustibility was perpetuated, including the trade in wild species.
This focus goes beyond dealing with the rampant illegal trade, it sits squarely in the management, regulation and resourcing of the legal trade system. There needs to be definitive proof that the sustainable use model works for each and every species before trade is allowed to continue. This also means that sustainable use as a basis for global development aid needs to be addressed, as it further increases the pressure on wildlife and protected areas. The strategy of selling off endangered species solely as a means of poverty alleviation in developing countries cannot be ignored and alternative models, such as a Basic Income, must be considered.
Addressing unsustainable commodification also goes beyond CITES. Agencies that exist today to promote trade and sustainable use without being responsible for the consequences – such as the WTO, UNCTAD and the World Bank – need to have updated mandates that restrict such promotion and funding to cases where sustainable use and sustainable growth can be proven upfront and in conjunction with the regulator – CITES.
ALL the most recent attempts to validate the sustainable use model have failed:
2024 Research: The Positive Impact Of Conservation Action. 33 authors conducted a meta-analysis starting with over 30,000 publications. Their finding on the impact of sustainable use was that it is ‘inconclusive’. Why? The major issue was they could find only 5 publications looking at sustainable use related impacts that fit the criteria. Think about that – FIVE studies that looked at whether sustainable use actually works.
Created in 2004, the Addis Ababa Principles and Guidelines On Sustainable Use have yet to be fully factored into the CITES listing mechanism and non-detriment findings. This can only be done if CITES moves to white-listing species for trade by adopting a ‘reverse listing’ model.
2022 Research: Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species. CITES instigated a massive assessment of the sustainable use of wild species by the IPBES, which analysed over 6,000 studies. This report found the international trade is linked with overexploitation and the massive growth in international trade has driven the increase in unsustainable use. The response from CITES – silence.
2021 Research: Impacts Of Wildlife Trade On Terrestrial Biodiversity, stated, “We examined 1,807 peer-reviewed articles and >200 TRAFFIC reports yet found no support for a quantified, existing sustainable trade”.
So, after decades, no evidence that the sustainable use model works and there is no commitment to building in the most basic processes for transparency. For example, of the 19 countries that make up the G20, which represents over 75% of the global trade, only 6 countries have modernised their CITES trade permit system. Implementing a digital system was first disused in 2002, yet Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Türkiye and the UK still used the 1970s paper permit system.
This isn’t a broken system, it was designed this way to let the unchecked looting continue in the name of legal trade. As for key players in the conservation world, their hubris and conformity has enable unchecked, industrial scale extraction of endangered and exotic species to to fly under the radar for decades, all under the guise of sustainable use.