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Trade in Environmental Goods and Services and Sustainable Development |
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Tuesday, July 21, 2009 |
Negotiations on environmental goods and services are not new to the multilateral trading system. While there is no universally acceptable definition on what environmental
goods are, they have always been part of negotiations under industrial or agricultural goods negotiations and, at least in principle continue to remain so. Trade in Environmental Goods and Services and Sustainable Development,
Domestic Considerations and Strategies for WTO Negotiations,
ICTSD Policy Discussion paper by Edmundo Claro, Nicolas Lucas, Mario Marconini, Mahesh Sugathan and Enrique Lendo
Paragraph 31 (iii), for the first time, singled out environmental goods as a group for liberalisation (reduction of tariffs and NTBs) under a WTO negotiating mandate.
Environmental services, on the other hand, have always been considered as inclusive of as a specific set of services within the WTO. These include wastewater treatment (or sewage services) and protection of ambient air and climate (or cleaning services for exhaust gases), even though there is disagreement as to whether to include services with an environmental end-use such as engineering or consultancy as a ‘pure’ environmental service per se.
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Submitted by Singapore
AIM
This paper seeks CTI's endorsement on a work programme framework for environmental goods and services (EGS) in APEC.
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