Germany is a contracting party to all the key international agreements in support of nature conservation. Moreover, bilateral intergovernmental or interdepartmental agreements of conservation relevance have been concluded with 27 states to date. Some International agreements have a thematic focus such as CITES, which only protects species threatened by international trade. Elaborating and ratifying new agreements under international law is a lengthy and difficult process. Once they have been negotiated and have entered into force, they are hard to modify. In some instances it is not possible, in others not purposeful, to choose such a form of cooperation binding under international law. In such cases, programmes operating within their own terms of reference can fill the gap. A prominent example in the field of nature conservation is the  UNESCO "Man and the Biosphere" programme.