China’s National Workshop on Environmental Goods and Services

20th – 22nd September 2007 • Co-organised with Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy (PRCEE) of SEPA; WTO Leadership Group on Environment and Trade of State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA); The International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development

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China’s National Workshop on Environmental Goods and Services (EGS) was jointly held on 20-22 September 2007 in Dalian, China by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), WTO Leadership Group on Environment and Trade of State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), and Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy (PRCEE) of SEPA. The workshop mainly focuses on the relationship between trade and environment, especially the WTO negotiation on EGS and its implications to China. Experts of WTO Leadership Group on Environment and Trade of SEPA presented the draft national report on environmental goods and services. The workshop focused on the general situations of WTO negotiations, the key issues of EGS negotiation, the implications of different approaches on trade liberalization in EGS to China and policy recommendations to Chinese government and other stakeholders.

The participants from Department of Policy, Laws and Regulations, Department of Pollution Control, Department of Ecological Conservation, Department of Science and Technology, and Department of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of SEPA introduced their concerns on EGS and related work with the EGS trade liberalization. All other participants also actively participated in the panel discussion including the hot discussion during breaks. Generally, the participants think that the trade liberalization of EGS will be very helpful to meet the demand of environmental protection in short-term and long-term. The experts drew a rough conclusion that the project approach on EGS trade liberalization is very complicated and related with too many stakeholders, and it is less feasible than the list approach on EGS trade liberalization.

The workshop also emphasized that the trade is one of strong drivers of national economic development in China and strongly promotes the economic and social construction so that the bilateral and regional trade liberalization progress is faster and the trade volume of natural resources are increasing with a high speed. However, the giant volume of goods export from China with earning of foreign currency is accompanying with the export of China’s environmental capacity, energy, water and other nature resources. As the biggest developing country, the growth rate of China’s economic and trade development and the import volume of resources and energy are raising the international concerns widely, which are increasingly affecting its politics, diplomacy, environmental protection and economic society. Currently, China’s environmental protection has been in the key period to realize the three historical transitions and all related ministries are making their efforts to prioritize the trade structure, change the trade growth pattern, and reduce the trade surplus to realize the trade balance. Thus, China should fully grasp the good opportunity to promote the transition of trade growth by environmental instruments, relax the environmental pressures by green trade, promote the development of economy and trade better and faster, realize the goals of three historical transitions in environmental protection and of energy saving and emission reductions, construct the resource-saving and environmental friendly society as well as harmonized society, and contribute to the construction of the harmonized world. And the EIA on the trade policy are emphasized in order to promote the trade growth by environmental instruments and use the trade instrument to save energy and reduce the pollutants.

The meeting put forward the following recommendations for the future work on trade and environment of WTO:

Firstly, to fully grasp the opportunities of WTO negotiation and other international negotiations in order to ensure China’s trade benefits as well as the environmental benefits by meeting the demand on EGS.

Secondly, to promote the trade growth by environmental instruments and use the green trade to relax the environmental pressures, which should be regarded as one of very important priorities of the future national environmental protection strategy should, as the cut-in point to participate the integrated the decision-making and as the important measure to fasten the historical transitions and realize the environmental goals.

Thirdly, to commence on EIA on trade policies, further complete EIA system, in order to meet the necessary needs of economic and social development further in China.

Some key speakers, Mr. Ricardo Melendez-Ortiz who is Chief Executive of ICTSD, Prof/Dr. YE Ruqiu who is Councilor of State Council, Mr. XU Qinghua who is Director General of International Cooperation Department of SEPA, Mr. ZHANG Xiangchen who is Director General of WTO Department of Ministry of Commerce (MofCom), Prof./Dr. XIA Guang who is Director General of PRCEE of SEPA, Mr. QIANGBO who is counselor of The Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the WTO, Liaoning Provincial Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB), Dalian EPB and China Customs, gave their keynote speeches. 50 participants composed of experts all over the world attended the national workshops.

Chinese Version