ITTO at CITES CoP 16

ITTO convened a side event together with the CITES Secretariat on March 8 to inform participants at CITES CoP 16 in Bangkok, Thailand of work under the ITTO-CITES Programme to Implement CITES Listings of Tropical Tree Species.  Over 100 people attended the event which was presided over by the Chair of the CITES Plants Committee (Margarita Clemente) and opened by the Executive Director of ITTO Emmanual Ze Meka and the Secretary General of CITES John Scanlon. The event also featured the launch of a video on the work of the Programme ITTO - CITES Custodians of the forest  and a panel discussion featuring program beneficiaries and donors.
 
ITTO also convened a meeting of the ITTO-CITES Programme Advisory Committee on March 7 where implementation of the Programme was discussed with over 20 Programme stakeholders. Minutes of this meeting will soon be posted on the ITTO website (<link to ITTO at work/CITES>). CoP 16 featured numerous agenda items relevant to tropical tree species, including reports on the Mahogany working group; work on Cedrela and Dalbergia species; treatment of plantations of agarwood producing species; Madagascar’s precious wood species; and proposals for listing over 200 species of tropical trees in Appendix II of CITES. ITTO contributed actively to all of these discussions, the results of which can be found on www.cites.org and www.iisd.ca/cites/cop16/

Event info and agenda