How is CITES financed?

The core administrative costs of the Secretariat, the Conference of the Parties and its subsidiary bodies, the Standing Committee and the other permanent committees, are financed from the CITES Trust Fund. This Trust Fund is replenished from contributions from the Parties to the Convention based on the United Nations scale of assessment, adjusted to take account of the fact that not all members of the United Nations are Parties to the Convention. The scale of contributions to the Trust Fund for 2006-2008 is shown in Annex 1 to Resolution Conf. 13.1 and that for 2009-2011 in Annex 1 to Resolution Conf. 14.1.

The status of contributions to the CITES Trust Fund is shown here.

The annual distribution of unpaid contributions of the Parties is shown here.

This information will be updated on a monthly basis.

External funding

Any activity that is not funded by the Trust Fund requires funding from external sources. These externally funded projects or activities are usually derived from Resolutions and Decisions adopted at the meetings of Conference of the Parties.

The attached tables contain a summary of all the external funds received by the Secretariat for project implementation during 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Besides funds coming from Governments, non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations and companies are also sources of external funding for CITES projects. The list of approved donors is available here.