Cooperation in Trade Facilitation among the Regional Commissions

The regional commissions have been giving increasing focus to trade facilitation in the overall context of their work for promotion of regional and inter-regional trade. Currently, with ECE leading the process, the regional commissions have been cooperating in the following areas:

Trade Facilitation

·  All Regional Commissions collaborated with ECE in organizing an International Forum on Trade Facilitation, which was held in Geneva, 29-30 May 2002. The Forum focused on the trade facilitation issues of developed, developing, transition and land-locked economies and worked on a new agenda for future work and direction in this area.

• ECE, as lead agency, launched the United Nations electronic Trade Documents (UNeDocs) project, which is supported by ESCAP and ESCWA. The aim is to promote and provide tools for the use of trade documents that are aligned to international trade standards in paper and electronic format.

• ECE together with ESCWA and ECA started a project for ‘Capacity-building in trade facilitation and electronic business in the Mediterranean’ region. ECA has designated its sub-regional Centre in Tangier, Morocco as lead unit for the implementation of the inter-regional Mediterranean initiative. The project, which is funded by the Development Account (2002-2003), aims at improving the competitiveness of companies, SMEs in particular, in non-European Union countries, in regional and global markets through simplifying and harmonizing trade procedures throughout the transaction chain..

Preliminary discussions have taken place with institutions, which are currently implementing European/ Mediterranean projects in order to build synergy and, in particular, to enhance the performance of SMEs.

 Cooperation has also been initiated with regional chambers of commerce. The first task of the project, which is to identify project member organizations within participating countries, has already started.

• Supported by ESCAP and ESCWA, ECE launched a common website called UNeTrades.Net (www.UNeTrades.Net) that provides global trade solutions for the trading community with loadable versions of UN codes, information of trade facilitation tools and techniques and technical cooperation projects. The website is run by ECE with support from ESCAP and ESCWA.

Standards

• In cooperation with ESCAP, ECE promoted the implementation of its commercial agricultural quality standards at the Asian seminar on “Safe and High Quality Food for International Trade”, held in April 2002 in New Delhi. The seminar provided recommendations for follow-up workshops and training courses to enhance the ability of Asian countries to trade their agricultural produce internationally.

Regional Waterworks

 Western Asia’s groundwater supplies

As part of its overall aim of establishing an effective and sustained mechanism for regional cooperation in water resources management, ESCWA has been holding workshops and meetings in Beirut on the region’s water supply.

In February 2002, it organized a consultative meeting together with ECE, ECA and UNESCO on “The Management for Shared Aquifer Resources within the Mediterranean Region,” as a project proposal for the European Union’s EuroMed Water Programme. Along the same lines, ESCWA held a five-day workshop in March 2002 on the issues of groundwater pollution, monitoring, protection and rehabilitation, and introduced the participants to recent advancements on remediation techniques.

 Could water scarcity in Europe lead to international tension?

With one in seven Europeans still denied access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation, a rise in international conflicts and disputes over water resources would seem inevitable. Yet international cooperation on water management can be a means to prevent conflict and settle disputes. This was one of the conclusions of the Second International Conference on the Sustainable Management of Transboundary Waters in Europe, held in Miedzyzdroje, Poland in April 2002, under the auspices of ECE.

The participants at the Conference also underlined the need to integrate transboundary water management with the management of surface and groundwater, coastal waters and marine resources.

Netherlands grants ECA $ 1.8 Million to strengthen water works

The new Netherlands Government grant to ECA is intended to support the commission’s activities on strengthening the Inter-Agency Group on Water in Africa for implementing the African Water Vision 2025, which forms part of this extra budgetary programme. This new contribution is an addition to the unearmarked contribution of $ 6 million for three years, for which an agreement was signed in August last year.

 Water and arsenic—serious issues in the ESCAP region

As the world’s population increases, demand for water also increases, and the problem is aggravated by poor water management systems. In some Asian countries, for example, water supply is being depleted at five times the international average because water is being wasted. Also, in many countries in this region arsenic contamination is becoming a very serious problem, and if the problem is not tackled soon, it could go out of control, endangering the lives of many people in the region. Both of these issues will be raised at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development.