South Africa's illegal wildlife trade policies index

The dataset lists illegal wildlife trade policies that affect South Africa at international, regional, national and international levels. It also incorporates ten indicators of political will, which assess the motivation to implement these policy provisions. 

These indicators are: 

1. The importance and prominence of decision makers involved in policy discussions
2. Whether a policy enforcement mechanism with incentives and disincentives for implementing the policy was established 
3. If human resources were committed to the policy’s implementation
4. Whether suitable financial resources were committed to the policy’s implementation
5. If milestones were integrated into the policy implementation initiative
6. The presence of a monitoring and evaluation mechanism
7. If this monitoring mechanism was suitably funded
8. Whether regular reports were received from the monitoring team
9. If new policy recommendations were debated, and,
10. Whether new policy recommendations were enacted. 

The presence of these ten indicators, or lack thereof, was then inputted into a series of causal loop diagrams (CLDs) to explore how each factor shaped the degree and direction of political will within the system.