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COMMUNITY CASE STUDY article
Front. Conserv. Sci.
Sec. Conservation Social Sciences
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcosc.2025.1553549
This article is part of the Research Topic Advancing the Science of Environmental Justice in the International Wildlife Trade View all 9 articles
Global Youth as Catalysts for Legal and Sustainable Wildlife Trade Solutions
Provisionally accepted
Michelle Anagnostou 1*
Celine Boon Yuan Ng 2 Jessica Grace Huiyi Lee 3 Adrian Hock Beng Loo 4
Peng Xiong Keith Ng 4 Keanu Sitjar 5 Hui Min Steffi Tan 2 Yong Jen Tang 2 Wai Kit Ting 3- 1 University of Oxford, Oxford, England, United Kingdom
- 2 CITES Global Youth Network, Singapore, Singapore
- 3 Mandai Nature, Singapore, Singapore
- 4 National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
- 5 Haribon Foundation, Quezon City, Philippines
Despite gaining traction in international forums, such as in global climate action spheres, the potential of youth in contributing to a legal and sustainable international wildlife trade remains under-tapped, overlooked and underexplored. This is an emerging topic of discussion, as Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) were first encouraged to explore opportunities to engage youth during the seventeenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties in 2016. In April 2024, the first meeting of the CITES Global Youth Network was held in Singapore, where concrete actions were collaboratively identified by youth from around the world. This paper aims to answer the following question: how may youth contribute to achieving the goals of the CITES Strategic Vision by 2030? As a first step in answering this question, this community case study collates the diverse voices of members of the CITES Global Youth Network. Using a backcasting perspective, and the CITES Strategic Vision as our desired future by 2030, we outline how youth may contribute to achieving the Vision, and offer ideas of how youth can be supported. We argue that youth are underrepresented voices in wildlife trade decision-making, and that their deeper and more meaningful engagement in CITES processes has significant potential to improve outcomes for a legal and sustainable wildlife trade in the longterm and fundamental to achieving intergenerational equity as envisioned by the Sustainable Development Goals.
Keywords: Biodiversity, global governance, illegal wildlife trade, sustainability, sustainable development, Youth Austria
Received: 30 Dec 2024; Accepted: 26 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Anagnostou, Ng, Lee, Loo, Ng, Sitjar, Tan, Tang and Ting. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Michelle Anagnostou, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 2JD, England, United Kingdom
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