29 November 2010: The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has published a report titled “International Trade After the Economic Crisis: Challenges and New Opportunities,” which analyzes new business opportunities in the environmental sector.

The report describes the size of the environmental market, governments’ supportive policies, and the environmental business competitiveness of a number of developed and developing countries. According to the report, the growth of the market reflects the pressing need to tackle pollution and climate change, for example by controlling greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the outlook of the potential depletion of strategic energy commodities combined with the increasing demand for energy in developing countries. Partly because of these growth prospects, major economies and emerging economies, including China, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the US, included “green” investment in their economic stimulus packages, the total value of which amounts to US$400 billion, as reported in the UNCTAD Trade and Environment Review 2009/2010.

A growing number of non-tariff measures (NTMs) linked to the environmental standards now also apply to the final products, as well as to the production and processing methods, such as those on the level of energy efficiency and those to limit hazardous substances in goods and in production processes. [Report on International Trade After the Economic Crisis]