Methods
CITES Wildlife TradeView is based on the trade data as reported by the Parties to CITES in their official annual reports to CITES and included within the CITES Trade Database. The codes that are used for source, purpose, trade term, etc. are based on the official codes used by CITES Parties (see Guidelines for the preparation and submission of CITES annual reports). To ensure that the reported trade in CITES-listed taxa is comparable across time and can be meaningfully visualised, some conversions were applied to standardise terms and units of measure. These are briefly described below.
Term conversions
A pdf table of term conversions applied to the trade data with relevant notes can be accessed at the bottom of the page.
Term codes are used to describe the type of item that is in trade; these can vary from live animals and plants to their parts and derivatives (e.g. bones, leather products, roots, timber products). CITES terms codes have evolved over time, with some older codes no longer used. Where possible, redundant term codes were converted to current CITES terms codes to enable comparisons over time (e.g. belts, handbags, wallets, etc. converted to “LPS - small leather products”). A table of term conversions applied to the trade data with relevant notes can be found here - CITES Wildlife TradeView - CITES Wildlife TradeView - Table of term conversions.pdf
A full list of the official CITES term codes and their corresponding description can be found in the Guidelines for the preparation and submission of CITES annual reports.Unit conversions
Where necessary, units of measure were converted to standardised metric units (e.g. m, kg and l) to make trade data more comparable. Trade reported without a unit or with a unit that could not be equated to a standardised unit of measure (e.g. bags, bottles, boxes, flasks, etc.) were considered to be traded as “number of items” and are displayed in CITES Wildlife TradeView as such. Trade reported in number of pairs was multiplied by two to give the correct number of items in trade (i.e., one pair of shoes equates to two individual shoes). Other taxon-specific conversions were made for units of measure relating to trade in corals, reptile skins and timber.
CITES Wildlife TradeView - Table of term conversions.pdf