This public forum session is co-organized by the Permanent Mission of Australia to the WTO, the Permanent Mission of New Zealand to the WTO, and the Forum on Trade, Environment & the SDGs (TESS). It will discuss approaches and pathways to address environmentally harmful agriculture subsidies in the multilateral trading system.
There is growing recognition that addressing sustainability challenges in agriculture is vital for ensuring sustainable food security and averting environmental degradation. Reforming agricultural subsidies plays a critical role in this process given their influence in shaping production and consumption patterns and their environmental impacts.
Emphasizing the urgent need for reform, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework calls for a USD 500 billion reduction of environmentally harmful subsidies by 2030 in a "proportionate, just, fair, effective and equitable way".
At the WTO, negotiations have mostly focused on the production and trade-distorting effects of subsidies. The session will explore possible options to define environmentally harmful agriculture subsidies. It will seek to identify the types of collaborative action that could be envisaged in the short and medium term to enable greater resilience of global agri-food systems.
Moderators
- H.E. James Baxter, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Australia to the WTO
- H.E. Clare Kelly, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of New Zealand to the WTO
Speakers
- Julia Nielson, Deputy Director, Trade and Agriculture Directorate, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
- Antonin Vergez, Senior Expert for Natural Resources Economics, IUCN
- Carolyn Deere Birkbeck, Executive Director, Forum on Trade, Environment & the SDGs
- Melaku Geboye Desta, African Trade Policy Centre, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
Co-hosted with
