The production and manufacturing of “green” products provide important opportunities for developing and least developed countries according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad).
A key area of UNCTAD's work on green exports is what is labelled BioTrade - the collection, production, transformation and commercialisation of goods and services derived from native biodiversity under the objectives of the Convention on Biological Resources (CBD), which came into force in 1993.
Markets for green products are growing significantly faster than conventional products.
“Green exports allow countries to foster economic, social and environmental sustainability at the same time,” Unctad’s Robert Hamwey says in a statement.
He says certification and labelling schemes – known as voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) – could be used as a market tool to harness green trade and exports for development.
According to Hamwey, VSS’ define social and environmental standards and certify producers and traders that fulfil those standards so that consumers are able to identify sustainable products for which they are usually willing to pay a higher price.
However, Unctad project leader, Miho Shirotori, noted that VSS’ don’t always work in favour of producers and therefore needed to be adjusted to address the challenges with certification faced by small farmers in developing countries.
“We have to focus on making VSS economically viable for producers to make them truly sustainable,” she said.
“This requires identifying the bottlenecks and addressing them with public interventions.”
