Background
In March 2018, the UNCTAD BioTrade Initiative launched its global BioTrade programme “Linking trade, biodiversity and sustainable development” with the financial support of the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO. As part of the activities under this 4-year programme, UNCTAD aims to compile and provide trade-related data which is relevant for reporting under the SDGs (e.g. indicators 15.6 and 15.9), relevant Aichi targets (e.g. Aichi Targets 2, 3 and 4) and post-Aichi targets.
Specifically, the BioTrade Initiative and the Development Statistics and Information Branch (DSIB) of UNCTAD are developing a mechanism that automatically compiles and provides updated trade flows of biodiversity-based products which will be directly accessible at https://unctadstat.unctad.org/EN/. In the second half of 2019, UNCTAD BioTrade and DSIB conducted a pilot exercise, to identify the trade flows from 2010 to 2018 of BioTrade priority species and products provided by partners, grouped into different HS subheadings. Specifically, the pilot considered the following BioTrade beneficiary countries: Botswana, Colombia, Ecuador, Lao PDR, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Peru, South Africa, Swaziland, Viet Nam, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Based on the lessons learned from this pilot exercise, UNCTAD BioTrade and DSIB have been upscaling the mechanism to include all biodiversity-based products and all countries.
The webinar will present the BioTrade/DSIB “Trade and Biodiversity mechanism” being developed. It will focus on presenting the data and the information that can be extracted from it, as well as an introduction to UNCTAD’s statistics platform – UNCTADstat – on which the biodiversity trade data mechanism will be hosted. This information aims to be used by partners for developing their activities, as well as for providing trade and biodiversity data that could be used for reporting into other national and international processes including those led by the CBD, UNCTAD, and United Nations system (e.g. national reports on SDG progress and CBD's national biodiversity strategies and actions plans).
Trade and Environment, Climate Change and Sustainable Development Branchhttps://unctad.org/topic/trade-and-environment
State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECOhttps://www.seco-cooperation.admin.ch/secocoop/en/home.html
