Trade and Environment Week : summary
The World Trade Organization arranged the third edition of Trade and Environment Week. This year, the event was held on October 17-21. The forum focuses on the condition of the trade and its impact on the environment. Learn more about this conference – in this article we are trying to shortly cover the event, discussing topics mainly raised by the speakers.
What is The Trade and Environment Week about?
The conference gives room for discussion to government officials, businessmen, international organizations, academics, and other stakeholders. It covers topics related to global trade – the talks are based on the subject related to how to make it more ecological, sustainable, resilient, and inclusive.
The main issue discussed at the opening meeting was multilateral trade and environmental cooperation. Currently, the greatest challenge is the fight against climate change. Transport must move towards greener solutions, which are at the same time efficient and profitable.
The meetings organized at each edition of Trade and Environment Week are an excellent platform for discussion, exchange of experiences, presenting innovative ideas, and learning the opinions of valued specialists. As a result, it is an excellent opportunity to gather valuable information that will contribute to finding optimal solutions and introducing the necessary changes. In this way, today’s challenges can be tackled together, in collaboration with various international organizations and institutions.
Main topics of meetings and events at TaEW 2022
At this year’s TaEW edition, many interesting discussions were held, such as:
- “High-Level Panel on Multilateral Trade and Environment Cooperation: Answering Crisis and Furthering Resilience”.
- “Environmental, social and governance (ESG) traceability of supply chains”.
- “A win-win agenda for Climate, Development, and Trade – how an inclusive Climate Club and Trade Policy can be part of the solution”.
- “Spotlight on International Collaboration to Accelerate Decarbonisation”.
- “Practical Trade Solutions to Facilitate Circular Economy”.
Interlocutors and participants thoroughly discussed the current situation in international trade and analyzed recent changes. They came to many interesting conclusions. As it is known, the pandemic did not harm the development of the industry – it was surprisingly resilient. The rapid development of e-commerce due to restrictions has largely contributed to this phenomenon. Despite further difficulties, such as the war in Ukraine or the global crisis, its further growth is still expected. Thanks to that, the trade will thrive in 2022 and 2023, even more than in previous years.
Trade development is of great importance as it allows accelerated economic growth, lower inflation, and gives access to the necessary products. Emerging economies significantly increased their share of world trade, from 24% in 2000 to 40% in 2012 (China alone, which generated a quarter from 2016 to 2021, accounted for half of this growth). In the last decade, however, this share has changed slightly. China will continue to achieve the largest trade growth in 2021-2026, but its share of global growth will drop to 13%.
Not only the economic or political situation, but most of all climate change will drive a shift in international trade – it has an important role to play in adapting to current changes. Appropriate adjustments can reduce the negative impact of trade on the environment, slowing down its degradation. However, there is still a lot of work to do for entrepreneurs and trade representative organizations.