United Nations Environment Programme

Since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992, UNEP has been working on the interaction between economic and trade policies, the environment and sustainable development. UNEP's primary objective has been to enhance the capacities of countries, particularly developing countries and those with economies in transition, to analyse these interlinkages and design and implement policies which maximize sustainable development gains from trade and other economic activities. This approach is consistent with the need to ensure mutually supportive trade and environmental policies that was recognized at UNCED, and reinforced by many multilateral decisions, including the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Doha Ministerial Declaration and the Plan of Implementation agreed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD).

The issues which UNEP is working on most intensively and that are directly relevant to the Doha and WSSD mandates are:

- enhancing synergies between multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) and the WTO;

- integrated assessment of trade-related policies at the national level; and

- fisheries subsidies and sustainable fisheries management.

UNEP is developing its activities and partnerships to ensure their complementarity, coordination and cost-effectiveness in relation to the policy-making and capacity building activities of other institutions working on environment, trade and sustainable development. UNEP's partnerships extend beyond UNCTAD, the WTO, the FAO and MEAs, to regional and sub-regional bodies, national institutions, and non-governmental organizations, and are intended to generate self-sustaining activities, with broad ownership. UNEP will continue to evaluate its activities against the achievement of enhanced coordination by relevant national ministries, and the design and implementation of integrated policies, which secure sustainable development.

The activities in these three areas are set out in more detail in the attached Special Bulletin for the WTO Ministerial Conference in Cancún. Additionally, a new UNEP Bulletin describes UNEP's relevant capacity building activities for integrated policy design and implementation for sustainable development. UNEP looks forward to developing these activities and its partnerships with other institutions working on this policy interface, in Cancun and beyond.