The author highlights that in order to achieve SDGs, managers and policy-makers need to recognize and navigate the role of humans in ecosystems and the complexity and uncertainty inherent in ecological systems. In the last decade, she notes, the Parties to CITES have increasingly adopted strategies that are consistent with these needs by putting more emphasis on capacity-building for science-based adaptive management, monitoring and information gathering, and the needs of local communities. . She argues that these developments in CITES have the potential to turn an apparently narrow wildlife trade treaty into an institution that can facilitate the achievement of SDGs, including conservation goals, by regulating and monitoring trade in wild species of fauna and flora. She analyzes these developments in CITES and addresses what more can be done to promote the SDGs through CITES.