While the main issues relate to over-fishing and over-logging, the topic of plant protection and their sustainable use will also be raised. CITES is an agreement between 169 governments, who aim to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival.
Decisions made at CITES could affect the interests of stakeholders in the dietary supplement industry by potentially encouraging trade restrictions and supporting the long-term protection of ingredients. The meeting agenda will also call into question how the practices of international companies trading such goods affect vulnerable populations.
"The acute challenges of the 21st century - from achieving the 2010 target for reducing the rate of loss of biodiversity to realizing the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 - make CITES more relevant today than ever before," said executive director Achim Steiner of the United Nations Environment Programme, in charge of administering the CITES secretariat.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) form a United Nations initiative primarily designed to improve the lot of those living in conditions of extreme poverty. The aim is to reduce the spread of disease and improve access to education by 2015.
Herbal ingredients fit under this far-reaching policy umbrella because they relate to the goals of sustainable development and reversing the loss of environmental resources.
The CITES conference, running through to 15 June, will also be looking to hammer out a plan to enforce its regulations controlling illegal trade and its potential effects on the livelihoods of the rural poor between 2008 and 2013,
Depending on a company's practices, this tightening of regulations could be seen as a help or a hindrance.
Companies not integrating the economic empowerment of communities into their practices could one day feel the regulatory weight on their shoulders.
The Amazon rainforest, the largest single national section of which expands across Brazil, presents a microcosm of the challenges found in other economies and areas facing development and environmental challenges.
In November, Mintel identified the "Amazonia movement" as a key trend for 2007 because of the growing interest in ingredients sourced from the rainforest.
However, unless the economic lot of local populations is improved and companies with unethical practices are punishes, these sources are at peril.
In the long-run industry will also suffer, and industries covered by CITES, such as logging, will also have a spin-off effect on the sourcing of ingredients.
The World Wildlife Fund estimates that the Amazon rainforest holds approximately 30 per cent of the world's plant species. The Amazon River is also the world's largest water basin, with a flow volume equal to 20 percent of the joint volume of all rivers on the planet.
Yet according to Brazilian government estimates, the Amazon forest will have lost 25 percent of its original area by 2020. This would be disastrous not only for the ecosystem of the region, but also for the world's climate.
Logging, and the unsustainable farming that leads to more logging, has been erasing large swaths of the rainforest as migrants exploit the land to earn a living. Cattle ranching and soybean farming are the two main industries for which trees are cleared.
Rules and regulations coming from the top down have had notoriously little impact in the Brazilian Amazon. Lack of funding and sufficient numbers of on-the-ground personnel, as well as administrative and corporate corruption, have made protecting the rainforest seem futile.
