Emerging trade opportunities for LDCs from the green transition

During the 9th Global Review of Aid for Trade, the WTO launched LDC Trade Priorities, a policy note examining the crucial role of trade in advancing the socio-economic development objectives of Least Developed Countries (LDCs), focusing on three specific topics: services, green transition, and regional integration. Tulip’s contribution to this policy note focuses on the green transition, emphasising the importance of ensuring that this transition does not create a green divide that leaves LDCs behind.

The brief highlights the need for a narrative shift at the WTO to avoid such a divide. Developed countries must recognise the negative implications of green trade measures on LDCs and prioritise an approach that aligns environmental and developmental goals, integrating the principles of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities into green trade discussions. LDCs, for their part, must adopt a proactive stance on green trade at the WTO, balancing both offensive and defensive interests. The brief also underscores the need for institutional arrangements that simultaneously address all three pillars of the trade-environment-development nexus.

To implement this narrative shift concretely, the brief outlines several key strategies: enabling LDCs to access goods, services, and technologies necessary for the green transition; helping LDCs develop new export markets for environmental goods and services in which they have a comparative advantage; and facilitating LDCs’ access to environmentally sound technologies.

Read the full publication here.