Community Voices: local perspectives on international responses to illegal wildlife trade

The London Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) took place on 11 and 12 October 2018. It was the fourth in a series of high-level conferences seeking to increase international commitments to tackling the IWT.

Despite formal commitments to recognise the important role of the indigenous peoples and local communities who live side-by-side wildlife in reducing IWT, the emphasis to date remains strongly on strengthening government or private sector-led law enforcement.

For this reason, immediately before the London Conference, IIED, IUCN-SULi, FFI and ZSL partnered to organise an event that brought local community representatives to London, enabled them to share their experiences in tackling IWT with each other, and with a wide variety of support-NGOs, donors and researchers.

The event was called Community Voices: Local Perspectives on International Responses to Illegal Wildlife Trade. This summary report gives a short overview of the event and presents the Community Statement to the London Conference on IWT 2018.