Abstract:

Background: The 78th Meeting of the Standing Committee (SC78) is the last standing committee meeting before the 20th Conference of the Parties (CoP20) of CITES, it conducted extensive discussions on the sustainability, legality and traceability of international trade in wild animals and plants, and laid a solid foundation for the CoP 20 and pointed out the direction for the compliance work. SC78 listened to the reports of the Secretariat, Animal Committee, Plant Committee and working groups on the implementation of decisions adopted by CoP19 (Panama, 2022), supervised the progress of the work, and drafted decisions for deliberation by CoP20. 

Perspectives: This article attempts to analyze the conceptual framework and strategy of CITES from the perspective of the Scientific Authority (SA) of Party, mainly focuses on the key topics of SC78, as well as the opinions of Parties, the response of relevant organizations and the decisions finally made by the Standing Committee, try to get a more clear understanding about the CITES scenario, and provide the assistant and suggestion for work related to the implementation of convention.

Key words: CITES, Standing Committee meeting, SC78, implementation of convention, situation analysis