ENVIRONMENTAL DATABASE FOR 2012
Note by the Secretariat[1]
1.
The WTO
Environmental Database (EDB) for 2012 covers information on: (i) national
environment-related measures notified under WTO Agreements, (Section 1); (ii)
environment-related provisions of notified Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs),
(Section 2); and (iii) national environment-related measures or programmes,
mentioned in Trade Policy Reviews (TPRs) carried out in 2012 (Section 3).[2]
2.
In order to
facilitate usage of EDB information, the EDB is being circulated in two parts:
this document, which contains a brief description and overall analysis of the
environment-related notifications and TPRs; and document WT/CTE/EDB/12/Add.1,
exclusively circulated electronically, which provides the underlying data used
for the analysis.[3]
3.
The electronic
data in WT/CTE/EDB/12/Add.1 enables users to search through all EDB environment-related
information according to specific criteria, for instance by Member, Agreement,
type of measure, product, activity, or environmental objective. The electronic file is divided into two main
worksheets: "Notifications",
listing all the environment-related notifications; and "TPRs", providing
the environment-related information mentioned in TPRs. In addition, a third worksheet entitled
"Summary" is included to allow users to retrieve pre-defined summary
tables and graphs.
[1] This document has been prepared under the Secretariat's own
responsibility and without prejudice to the positions of Members and to their
rights and obligations under the WTO.
[2] To recall, the EDB is prepared in response to a recommendation in
the 1996 Report of the Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE) to the
Singapore Ministerial Conference for the Secretariat to compile and update
annually all environment-related notifications to the WTO (see WT/CTE/1) and
was initiated in 1998 (see WT/CTE/3). The
list of search words is contained in Annex I to this document; the list of
abbreviations is contained in Annex VI.
See also the following documents containing information on search words:
WT/CTE/W/46, WT/CTE/W/78 and WT/CTE/W/102.
Previous Environmental Databases have been circulated in the
following documents: EDB 1996 in WT/CTE/W/46, EDB 1997
in WT/CTE/W/77, EDB 1998 in WT/CTE/W/118, EDB 1999 in WT/CTE/W/143, EDB 2000
in WT/CTE/W/195, EDB 2001
in WT/CTE/EDB/1, EDB 2002 in WT/CTE/EDB/2, EDB 2003 in WT/CTE/EDB/3, EDB 2004
in WT/CTE/EDB/4, EDB 2005 in WT/CTE/EDB/5, EDB 2006 in WT/CTE/EDB/6,
EDB 2007 in WT/CTE/EDB/7, EDB 2008 in WT/CTE/EDB/8, EDB 2009 in
WT/CTE/EDB/9 and Add.1, EDB 2010 in WT/CTE/EDB/10 and Add.1, and EDB 2011
in WT/CTE/EDB/11 and Add.1.
[3] Annex VII provides the electronic EDB user's guide.