News

​The Commodities and Development Report 2015, entitled "Smallholder Farmers and Sustainable Commodity Development" was launched on 17 December 2015 on the margins of the tenth Ministerial Conference of the WTO taking place in Nairobi. The presentation of the report was preceded by an introduction by Joakim Reiter, UNCTAD's Deputy Secretary-General.

UNCTAD worked with the Ministry of Foreign Trade over the past two years to identify the "green" products the country is best positioned to competitively produce and export. The results have just been published in Ecuador's National Green Export Review and Plan of Action.

Tras la adopción formal del Plan Nacional de Acción, la UNCTAD entrevistó a Silvana Vallejo, Viceministra de Comercio Exterior del Ecuador, quien resaltó las oportunidades que esto representa para la oferta exportable y sustentable del país.

Experts discuss the practical implications of the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol and its impact over certain aspects of BioTrade, at a peer review meeting in Geneva on 24 November 2015.

UNCTAD and the Ministry charged with Environment, organized a first national stakeholder workshop on Morocco's National Green Export Review on 20 and 21 October, to identify green products and sectors with high development potential in the Kingdom.

Market potential for BioTrade goods is estimated at 141 billion USD, but complex standards and other non-tariff barriers prevent many small producers from taking advantage of market opportunities.

The 2015 UNCTAD Global Commodities Forum tackled new dynamics in international agricultural markets, and policy options for commodity-dependent economies in Geneva from 13-14 April.

​UNCTAD's two-day Global Commodities Forum on 13–14 April provided a platform for differing views on how best to reform Swiss commodities trading to benefit people in the developing countries where raw materials are grown or extracted.

"Transforming Commodities into Sustainable Development", will be the focus of UNCTAD Commodities Week (13-17 April 2015).

Representatives from the Swiss Government, individual trading companies and transparency advocates will discuss the current lack of publicly available information about commodity trading in Switzerland at UNCTAD's sixth annual Global Commodities Forum at the Palais des Nations in Geneva on 13–14 April 2015.