The international wildlife trade -- both legal and illegal -- is booming, but the system meant to regulate it is buckling under the weight of its own limitations.

Created in the 1970s when wildlife trafficking was in its infancy, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) was conceptualised on market principles that saw wildlife as an export commodity.

As the trafficking of wild creatures rocketed, Cites has failed to deal with the growing social, ecological and moral consequences and the deeper injustices playing out across the globe.

This is the view in a new policy review published in Frontiers in Conservation Science, which argues that it's time for more than reform -- it's time for a complete overhaul. Authored by Nicholas King, Gunārs Platais and Jamie Reaser, the paper calls on member states to recreate Cites not as a marketplace regulator but as a global justice mechanism.

The authors contend that without embedding environmental justice -- justice for people, species and ecosystems -- into its core mandates, Cites will continue to fall short of its mission and accelerate the very crises it was designed to prevent.

The Cites secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland,...