The need for developing mutually supportive trade and environmental policies was expressed at the World Summit for Sustainable Development, where Member States called on United Nations organizations, including regional organizations, to enhance the delivery of coordinated and targeted technical assistance and capacity building programs on trade and environment and particularly to promote cooperation on trade, environment and development and provide technical assistance to developing countries to this end.

The basis for this mandate is found in Millennium Development Goal 7, which calls upon the global community to ensure environmental sustainability. In order to achieve this objective, efforts are necessary to support the integration of sustainable development principles into country policies and programmes and adopt measures to improve environmental sustainability.

Further, the Doha Ministerial Declaration of the Member States of the World Trade Organization emphasises the importance of the trade and environment nexus in paragraphs 31-33 by: a) mandating further negotiations; b) instructing the Committee on Trade and Environment to give attention to issues including the effect of environmental
measures on market access; and c) recognising the importance of technical assistance and capacity building in trade and environment to developing countries.

This interregional Development Account project seeks to achieve these goals by strengthening the capacity of developing countries to formulate effective trade and environment policies. The objective of the project is for developing member states to increase market access for their products and to enhance environmental sustainability by:

     a) enhancing the capacity of developing countries to appropriately respond to the
         environmental standards of developed countries thus improving market access to
         developed country markets; and

     b) better manage the pressures on the local environment arising from trade flows
         into developing countries, these pressures being: (i) those impacts arising from
         the import of environmentally hazardous products; and (ii) the impact of imports
         that are environmentally unsustainable.

As a regional and interregional project, the project focuses on regional, sub-regional and national approaches such as sharing of good practices and other information, and networking.

Activities include the preparation of regional studies in each region on market access and environmental requirements using a sector specific example of interest to the region, as well as regional, sub-regional capacity building workshops and national roundtables.

This website is intended to gather all information and documentation produced under the project (including studies, training material and the results of workshops, roundtables and seminars), with a view to facilitate information exchange within and among regions, in particular on good practices.