The international wildlife trade is estimated to be worth billions of dollars each year and includes hundreds of millions of plant and animal specimens. The trade is diverse, ranging from live animals and plants to a vast array of wildlife products derived from them, including food products, exotic leather goods, wooden musical instruments, timber, tourist curios and medicines.

Because the trade in wild animals and plants crosses borders between countries, the effort to regulate it requires international cooperation to protect endangered species. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) was adopted in 1973 to enable such cooperation. Today, it accords varying degrees of protection to more than 40,000 species of animals and plants, whether they are traded as live specimens, fur coats or dried herbs.

The CITES Standing Committee provides policy guidance concerning the implementation of the Convention and oversees the management of the Secretariat's budget. It also coordinates and oversees the work of the CITES Plants and Animals Committees, carries out tasks given to it by the Conference of the Parties (CoP), and drafts resolutions for consideration by the CoP.

The seventy-seventh meeting of the CITES Standing Committee followed the Animals and Plants Committee meetings held in June 2023, where members reviewed emerging operational matters of the committees, alignment of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework with the CITES Strategic Vision 2021-2030, sustainability criteria of non-detriment findings (NDF) in the context of the Plants Committee, about timber species, and the role of CITES in reducing the risk of future zoonotic disease emergence associated with international wildlife trade.

In addition to the issues above, the Standing Committee considered:

• the establishment of the CITES Youth Global Network;
• compliance matters, including the expedited application of Article XIII for West African rosewood (Pterocarpus erinaceus) for all range states;
• the proposal for a resolution on illegal trade in big cats, including the possible revision of Resolution 12.5 (Rev. CoP19) on Conservation of and trade in tigers and other Appendix-I Asian big cat species to be applicable to all big cat species;
• consider what action is necessary to address the issue of undocumented trade in Carcharhinus longimanus (oceanic whitetip shark);
• the request to work with INTERPOL and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime to convene a Wildlife Inter-Regional Enforcement meeting and a Regional Investigative and Analytical Case Meeting on totoaba;
• progress made by saiga range state parties and important consumer and trading countries/regions of saiga parts and derivatives on the implementation of the Medium-Term International Work Programme for the Saiga Antelope for 2021-2025;
• experiences and lessons learned in engaging Indigenous Peoples and local communities in the CITES processes in both 2020 and 2023; and
• the future approach to the language strategy of the Convention in order to provide interpretation in all six languages at the meetings of the CoP.

CITES SC77 convened from 6-10 November 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Earth Negotiations Bulletin writers for this meeting were Tanya Rosen; Jennifer Bansard; and Olivia Pasini. The Digital Editor was Kiara Worth, Ph.D. The Editor was Pamela Chasek, Ph.D.