(Geneva) The Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the EU and other countries on Monday called for urgently putting the climate issue at the heart of trade concerns.
Posted at 1:01 p.m.
“It is urgent to green trade: climate change does not wait. The work has already started at the WTO,” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said on Twitter, following a meeting on the subject with ministers in Geneva.
Mme Okonjo-Iweala also gave his support to the ministerial coalition on trade and climate that the EU, Ecuador, Kenya and New Zealand launched on Monday.
“The climate crisis is a global problem, and to respond to it, we need global action,” stressed the Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of Trade, Valdis Dombrovskis.
“Trade must be part of the solution. It is an engine of growth that can create new green jobs, reduce poverty and support the transition to climate-neutral economies,” he argued.
Ministers want trade and trade policies to support the climate goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement and sustainable development.
A first meeting is scheduled for July to decide on the coalition’s next steps.
The issue of climate change, per se, is not expressly included in the WTO agreements. But the organization wants to make sustainable development and environmental protection “central” objectives.
“We must profoundly change the way we produce and consume things if we want our children to have a sustainable, peaceful and comfortable life in 50 years,” urged Xiangchen Zhang, deputy director-general of the WTO, on Monday.
“Trade must be part of the solution and not part of the problem,” he said at a press conference.
“A very exciting moment”
As part of the ongoing negotiations on the mutual support of trade liberalization and the environment, WTO member countries are working to eliminate trade barriers in the goods and services sectors that may benefit the environment.
In addition, several dozen WTO member countries pledged in late December to intensify discussions on plastic pollution, fossil fuel subsidies and environmentally sustainable trade. A moment described as “historic for the WTO” by Mrme Ngozi.
Since then, the number of countries that have joined these groups has increased, said Australian Ambassador George Mina, one of the coordinators of the Dialogue on Plastic Pollution, on Monday.
“This is a very exciting time for the global trading system and the WTO. For too long we have failed to integrate key environmental concerns into our work at the WTO, and in recent months we have seen a significant increase in the attention given to these issues,” he said. -it belongs.
Several million tonnes of plastic arrive each year in the waters of the planet, a good part of which ends up at sea. If the production of plastic has exploded, especially since the 1980s, the development of recycling has not kept pace. .
Both Mina and Chinese Ambassador Chenggang Li, who is also coordinating talks on plastic pollution, said the WTO has a role to play in solving this problem.
“Plastic is a fundamental raw material, but the loss of plastic in nature pollutes and causes environmental damage”, lamented the Chinese ambassador, explaining that this pollution represents “a global challenge, which requires global cooperation”.
At another press conference, Icelandic Foreign Minister Thordís Kolbrún Gylfadottir denounced the fact that global subsidies granted to fossil fuels exceed those granted to renewable energies.
“This should be a wake-up call for all of us,” she said.