Trade can scale up the use of clean technologies by opening markets and stimulating innovation. This brings down their cost through economies of scale, and thereby making clean technologies more accessible to less developed countries. Trade policy instruments include tariff reductions, elimination of subsidies, voluntary sustainability standards, green procurement rules and trade finance. They can – if designed and applied properly - serve as effective vehicles to the development and application of environmentally sound technologies.

This indicator has a two pronged approach Level 1. Use globally available data to create a proxy of funding flowing to developing countries for environmentally sound technologies, or of trade in environmentally sound technologies and Level 2. Collect national data on investment in environmentally sound technologies. A global model would be based on trade flows using HS codes; UNEP is planning to commission a work to commence global modelling with the University of London Centre for Sustainable Finance. UNEP is also in the process of designing an Indicator Reporting Information System to collect this data from countries.

Contact: UNEP: Jillian Campbell; Mark Radka on the information system: Dany Ghafari; Centre for Sustainable Finance: Felicia Jackson.