The World Customs Organization (WCO) co-ordinated the Green Customs Global Conference on June 27-28. The conference created awareness for the role that Customs plays in protecting the environment and to provide a platform for a number of stakeholders’ expectations from Customs to be heard.
Green Customs was recently adopted as one of the focus areas for the WCO’s strategic plan, according to WCO Secretary General, Dr Kunio Mikuriya. In his opening remarks, Mikuriya highlighted the importance of hearing stakeholders’ views to position Customs’ role in addressing climate change and related environmental issues.
EU TAXUD Director General, Gerassimos Thomas, mentioned some of the EU’s initiatives in his keynote speech, and urged the Customs community to adapt to environment challenges.
The first of four panels addressed the concept of the circular economy and its relevance to Customs and explained related emerging trade trends and key challenges for the transition to a circular economy.
The second panel discussed the cross-border movement of waste as case studies of concrete actions by Customs. The next focus was on the implementation of trade policy, and therefore on Harmonized System (HS) and other Customs measures. The WCO Secretariat is to organise a series of symposiums on ‘Greening the HS’ later this year to discuss these issues in depth.
The final panel looked at what Customs could do in the field of environment and trade policies and emphasised the necessity for its involvement in open communication with trade, environment and other relevant government agencies and the private sector. Examples where given of how technology and innovation could be used to manage environmental risks.
Mikuriya remarked in his closing speech that the conference had “successfully launched a dialogue between many stakeholders on environmental and trade policies to understand the complexity of the issue and to explore the role of Customs”.
More than 20 speakers and 200 in-person participants from Customs administrations, international organisations, non-governmental organisations, universities and the private sector actively participated in the dialogue. Hundreds of listeners were present online.