Saturday will see a triennial meeting being organized by the only UN body with the power to ban trade in endangered animals and plants in Doha where engendered species like bluefin tuna, African elephants and polar bears would be discussed.

The 1975 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) aims at voting on less severe measures to conserve various types of shark and their sub-species, along with forwarding the proposal to stop cross-border commerce in bluefin, fiercely contested by sushi-loving Japan.

Each year witnesses hunting of over 73 million of the open-water predators, which are considered to be a delicacy mainly in China and Chinese communities around the world.

The 13-day CITES conference, the first to be held in the Middle East, would be attended by nearly 120 of the 175 member states.

There are a total of 41 proposals put on table and one of these proposals forwarded by Tanzania and Zambia aims at reopening trade in ivory, currently under a nine-year moratorium that started in 2008.

The move is not well supported by most of other African nations, as they support a competing measure that would extend the ban another decade.

Even Polar bears are up for apparently called APPENDIX I listing, which triggers a total ban on international trade.

The meeting aims at finding a sustainable balance between protection and commercial exploitation for thousands of species.

There is a need for the measures to receive a two-thirds majority of those nations present to be adopted, and are then enforced by laws passed in member nations.