First day: Seventh Stakeholders Steering Committee (SSC) meeting for BioTrade

Objective

The Global BioTrade programme “Linking trade, biodiversity and sustainable development”’s Stakeholders Steering Committee (SSC) has brought together BioTrade partners on an annual basis allowing joint exploration of key issues in sustainable trade and biodiversity while contributing to policy recommendations for the international fora. The SSC is a valuable platform for sharing experiences, setting priorities, guiding partners’ actions, allocating responsibilities and identifying areas for potential partnerships, with the aim of coordinating BioTrade activities worldwide.

For ensuring the continued coordination and collaboration among BioTrade partners beyond the current programme ending in October 2024, the 7th SSC meeting will:

• Discuss the development of a new framework for UN Trade and Development’s work on trade and biodiversity, notably the “Trade for Biodiversity (T4B) programme” (Day 1).
• Provide a sharing and learning opportunity for partners to highlight their past and future activities, including those related to the upcoming 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 16) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) (Day 2).
• Exchange on coordination and knowledge sharing channels for continued engagement on BioTrade activities beyond the current programme, for example through virtual SSC meetings (Day 2).

Background

UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) first launched the first phase of the BioTrade Facilitation Programme in 2003 with the support of the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO. The programme started with the aim of assisting developing countries’ private and collective enterprises in export promotion of sustainably extracted biodiversity-based goods and services, providing a sustainable livelihood to local communities and thus an incentive to protect biodiversity. This was done by implementing the BioTrade Principles and Criteria and related schemes. Since then, the BioTrade Initiative has been implementing several programme phases collaborating with an increasing number of partners implementing BioTrade programmes at the international, regional and national levels.

The current programme phase named Global BioTrade programme “Linking trade, biodiversity and sustainable development” was launched in 2018.  It aims to support the achievement of the SDGs, the Aichi targets and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (The Biodiversity Plan) adopted in 2022. The programme contributes to expanding the potential of the BioTrade approach for biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction, as well as seizing business opportunities evidenced by the turnover growth of companies, associations and projects implementing the BioTrade Principles and Criteria and related schemes, from $40 million in 2003 to $31 billion in 2022. For this, the BioTrade Initiative has been working with a wide range of partners, practitioners and stakeholders in over 80 countries to conserve biodiversity and generate livelihoods while promoting sustainable trade.

In October 2022, SECO and UN Trade and Development agreed to a 2-year extension of the current phase focusing on BioTrade but also expanding the scope to other emerging trade and biodiversity related issues. Through this extension, work supports key stakeholders to seize and capitalize on trade opportunities while synchronizing and leveraging results from previous phases.