Voluntary certification, market access & improved ecosystem management
The Challenges
More Information
Case Study - Utilise ecolabelling schemes and environmental certification to encourage trade and provide higher prices for producers, whilst also ensuring that environmental and social concerns are met.
Ecolabelling to promote sustainable consumption...
Product certification and eco-labels provide consumers, retailers and policy makers with information about the characteristics and environmental impacts of labelled products
and services.
Armed with this information, consumers are able to make more informed choices about the goods and services they buy and signal their preferences to manufacturers and service providers.
These and other market opportunities have led to an array of certification and labelling programmes supported by government,
industry and NGOs.
Concerns over market access and competitiveness...
The challenge for policy makers is to ensure that advances in certification and ecolabelling are made based on definitions of, and standards for, environmentally beneficial goods and services and do not adversely impact market access and competitiveness of products from developing countries.
These concerns have led to demands that eco-labelling schemes be examined for their trade impacts and that internationally agreed criteria are established to guarantee their legitimacy.
The Opportunity
A number of initiatives both within and outside the WTO have been created to impose disciplines on ecolabelling , in an effort to avoid their use for 'protectionist purposes'. These initiatives are also meant to help developing countries and small businesses cope with the complexities of ecolabelling schemes.
However, it is imperative that progress already achieved in developing standards for international labelling should be improved upon and not eroded, and that efforts to build upon existing successes such as the FSC should be supported. Opportunities also exist to promote non governmental ecolabelling programmes through international criteria agreed outside the WTO in conjunction with a wide range of developing countries.
What we do
WWF helping shape international discussions on ecolabelling, and the criteria by which such schemes are considered compliant with international trade rules.
