The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) permit and certification ensures that international trade in listed endangered species, including orchids, is sustainable, legal and traceable. The Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) and its subsequent Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from Their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity (Nagoya Protocol) promotes conservation and sustainable development of all genetic resources with an access and benefit-sharing permit and contract system. This article reviews these schemes applied to wild collected orchids and makes the argument that the Nagoya Protocol's checkpoints and international certificates of compliance establishing the resource origin/legal provenance overcomes some of the limitations of CITES. This will require more States to implement the Nagoya Protocol and CITES and CBD to properly address their co-operation, co-ordination and synergies to avoid perverse outcomes from fragmented regulation.