WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONWT/CTE/W/137
30 March 2000
(00-1314)
Committee on Trade and Environment
UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME (UNEP)
ACTIVITIES ON ENVIRONMENT AND TRADE
Communication from UNEP
1. UNEP’s Environment and Trade Programme aims to improve countries’ understanding of the
interlinkages and complementarities between trade, environment and development.  The  Programmeforms the basis for activities on environment and trade by UNEP’s Economics and Trade Unit
(UNEP/ETU).
2. The Programme comprises four integrated and complementary activities:
A. Capacity building  to enhance countries’ capacities to develop mutually supportive
trade-environment policies;
B. Research  on major issues in the trade-environment domain and on practical
approaches to sustainably address them;
C. Consensus building  through awareness raising, consultations and policy dialogue to
seek out areas of shared perception and approach among major stakeholders on
trade-environment issues;  and
D. Partnerships  to build synergies and complementarities with other organizations
working in the trade-environment domain.
SUMMARY OF PROGRAMME ACTIVITIES
3. A brief description of Programme activities with selected projects and initiatives is provided
below.
A. 
CAPACITY BUILDING
4. UNEP works closely with Governments, particularly those of developing countries and
countries with economies in transition, to assist them in their efforts to enhance their institutional and
human capacities for integrating environmental considerations in development planning and decision
making.  Emphasis is placed on a practical learning-by-doing, rather than a learning-by-showing,approach.
UNEP country studies
5. Six country studies on trade liberalization, environment and economic instruments were
implemented under the first round of UNEP's ‘Capacity Building for Integrating Environmental
Considerations into Development Planning and Decision-Making Project’.WT/CTE/W/137
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6. Over the past two years, UNEP has worked with national institutions and Governments in
Bangladesh, Chile, India, the Philippines, Romania and Uganda on comprehensive projects to assess
the impacts of trade liberalization on natural and environmental resources and to develop policy
packages to sustainably manage these impacts.  Studies encompassed new action-oriented research on
unique trade-related environmental problems and their developmental and economic implications indiverse sectors – the forestry, mining, fisheries, manufacturing, and water sectors – and varied country
settings.
7. These studies were entirely country-driven – conceived, designed and conducted by national
teams of practitioners – making them among the first of their kind.  Moreover, projects involved
multi-stakeholder participation to accurately iden tify the dynamics involved in environmental
degradation, and to develop innovative and widely acceptable national response strategies.
8. Each study concluded by recommending a set of practical measures – comprising command-
and-control regulations, economic instruments and voluntary initiatives designed to meet national
conditions – that aim to reduce trade-related environmental degradation, and in turn, ensure that the
country's trade remains sustainable over the long-term.
9. UNEP country studies do not end with published reports;  the final component of each
country study involves a pilot implementation of proposed measures undertaken by local and nationalauthorities in collaboration with each study’s national team and with technical assistance from UNEP.
All six country studies, and a synthesis report summarizing their main results and conclusions, have
recently been published and are available from UNEP/ETU and from its website
http://www.unep.ch/etu.  In December 1999, UNEP convened an international meeting of
trade-environment experts, from governmental and non-governmental organizations, to review results
and lessons learned from the first round of studies.  Based on recommendations from the meeting and
substantial demand from countries for additional studies, UNEP is launching a second round of
country studies on trade liberalization and the environment.  Interested institutions can submit
proposals for prospective studies for the second round to UNEP/ETU.
UNEP-UNCTAD Capacity Building Task Force on Trade, Environment and Development
10. Efforts to enhance countries’ capacity to deal with trade-environment-development issues are
critical to the sustainable management of gl obalization.  For this reason, UNEP and UNCTAD are
initiating a joint capacity building task force to strengthen the capacities of countries, particularly
developing countries and countries with economies in transition, to effectively address
trade-environment-development issues at the na tional level and to participate effectively in
trade-environment-development deliberations at the international level.
11. The UNEP-UNCTAD Capacity Building Task Force (CBTF) has been conceived to combine
the unique strengths of UNEP to build capacities on environmental aspects of trade, and of UNCTAD
to build capacities on the development aspects of trade.  By enhancing synergies between UNEP and
UNCTAD, and drawing on the two organisations’ technical expertise and comparative advantages,
the CBTF will more efficiently make resources available to a wider range of beneficiaries.
12. Through research, training and country studies, the CBTF will seek to enhance countries’
appreciation of the sustainable development benefits that accrue when environmental considerations
are integrated into national economic and trade policies.  Through research and policy dialogue, it will
also aim to raise countries’ awareness of the need to ensure that international environmental and trade
policy regimes remain mutually supportive and consistent, with each other, and with countries’
national sustainable development objectives.WT/CTE/W/137
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13. A briefing session for the Geneva missions was held on 17 March 2000 to present the CBTF
to Governments and obtain their views on how it can be best implemented to meet their interests,
needs and concerns.
B. RESEARCH
14. UNEP/ETU is currently working on many different research projects.  Some major efforts
include:
A manual on criteria for integrated assessments of trade policies and agreements
15. UNEP is preparing a manual for the assessment of trade agreements and trade liberalization
policies.  Using a simplified checklist approach, the manual will help negotiators, policy makers and
practitioners to assess trade agreements and policies against widely accepted sustainable development
criteria.  By enhancing decision makers’ understanding of potential environmental impacts – and
related developmental and economic implications – of trade policies and agreements, the manual aimsto facilitate the negotiation, formulation and implementation of trade policies and agreements.
Among the sectors covered by the manual are agriculture, services, textiles and fisheries.  The
manual, currently in preparation, will be reviewed by relevant institutions and experts before its
completion in 2000.  A first expert meeting took place last December in Geneva where a preliminary
draft version of the manual was presented and discussed.  Following that discussion, the text has beeninternally reviewed.  Another review meeting took place in March in Quito, Ecuador.
Paper on the implementation of th e precautionary approach/principle
16. This paper explores the role of the precautiona ry approach/principle in international and
national environmental law-making, and its implications for issues related to trade and environment.
The first draft of the paper was distributed to Geneva missions and was discussed at a peer reviewmeeting organized by UNEP/ETU in June 1999.  The second draft of the paper, which incorporates
views and comments expressed by Governments, will be circulated in April 2000 for another review
before its finalization.
C. 
CONSENSUS BUILDING
17. Consensus building activities of UNEP’s Environment and Trade Programme seek to bring
experts and decision makers together in informal and unofficial dialogue to raise awareness and
enhance understanding of issues so that options to carry forward the trade-environment agenda may
be identified and explored.  These activities take place in the form of conferences, workshops and
roundtable consultations and policy dialogues.
Workshop on MEAs and the WTO
18. On 29 June 1999, UNEP convened its first in a series of informal workshop with the
Secretariats of UNEP-Administered Conventions and the Secretariat of the WTO.  Overtwenty participants from intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations informally shared
views on how coherence between multilateral environmental and trade agreements could be
improved.  The meeting sought to enhance understanding between the Secretariats of
UNEP-Administered Conventions and the WTO of their respective underlying principles and
institutional and operational arrangements and allowed secretariat officials informally to exchangeviews and discuss areas of mutual interest.  Recognizing the historically separate development of the
trade and MEA regimes, participants discussed how these regimes might be made more compatible
and mutually supportive in the future.WT/CTE/W/137
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19. At the eighth session of the Commission on Sust ainable Development, which will be held on
24 April – 5 May 2000, UNEP is organizing a side-event on the relationship between MEAs and the
WTO Agreements.  The meeting will address a rang e of issues including compliance, enforcement
and dispute settlement.
D. PARTNERSHIPS
20. There is a need to ensure proper coordination and collaboration between international
organizations, including non-governmental organizations, working in the trade-environment domain.
UNEP thus seeks to build synergies and complementarities with other organizations active in this
area.
UNEP collaboration with the WTO
21. Following the press conference held in Seattle by the Executive-Director of UNEP and the
Director-General of the WTO on enhanced cooperation between the UNEP and WTO Secretariats,UNEP would like to reconfirm its willingness to cooperate more intensively with the WTO Secretariat
on trade and environment issues.
UNEP collaboration with UNCTAD
22. UNEP and UNCTAD have been actively cooperating in the trade-environment field under a
Memorandum of Understanding signed in July 1997.  This collaboration has focused on conveningjoint expert meetings, undertaking joint studies, and managing the implementation of country-based
projects.  UNEP and UNCTAD look forward to increa sing their cooperation and coordination in the
trade-environment-development field through th e UNEP-UNCTAD Capacity Building Task Force
(see section A above).
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