Global biodiversity loss is occurring at untenable rates. This is being driven by human activities, including wildlife trade. People around the world use wildlife and wildlife products in many different ways, with motivations ranging from nutritional to recreational, financial to spiritual. Effective wildlife trade governance is essential to ensure the sustainability of trade and to conserve biodiversity. Trade chains often span multiple countries and continents, making ecological and socioeconomic impacts highly telecoupled. Managing and regulating such a massive, valuable and diverse industry requires international cooperation and coordination. Yet, increasing polarization over the consumptive use of wildlife have led some countries to become disenfranchised by multilateral treaties and agreements like the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). For half a century, CITES has served as the primary mechanism for the regulation of international wildlife trade, setting out which species can or cannot be traded across national borders and the conditions for doing so. However, polarization over elephant ivory and rhino horn trade has raised tensions in CITES, pushing ten Southern African Development Community countries to suggest an outright withdrawal from the Convention. The denunciation of CITES by such a large and ecologically significant bloc would substantially weaken its integrity, credibility, and stature. A relevant contemporary precedent is worth referencing: Japan left the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 2019 due to polarization over commercial whaling. This talk outlines the common threads between these two cases: changing organizational ethos, polarization amongst members, influence of non-state actors, and loss of decidability for dissenting nations. Taking critical lessons from Japan’s IWC withdrawal, various options for structural reforms in CITES to restore decidability, enable equitability, and implement inclusive decision-making are discussed.