PUBLIC, IN-PERSON EVENT

Venue: WTO – ROOM D

This panel will be moderated by the Permanent Representatives of Australia and New Zealand to the WTO. 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. This session will discuss different approaches and pathways to address environmentally harmful agriculture subsidies in the multilateral trading system. It will explore possible options to define such subsidies and the types of collaborative action that could be envisaged in the short and medium term to enable greater resilience of global agri-food systems.

Please note that this event will be held at the World Trade Organization and will be limited to those who have registered for the WTO Public Forum.

Speakers:

• Ambassador James Baxter and Ambassador Clare Kelly Baxter, Australian Permanent Mission to the WTO and New Zealand Permanent Mission to the WTO
• Carolyn Deere Birkbeck, Executive Director, Forum on Trade, Environment and the SDGs
• Melaku Geboye Desta, African Trade Policy Centre, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
• Julia Nielson, Deputy Director of the Trade and Agriculture Directorate, OECD
• Antonin Vergez, Senior Expert for Natural Resources Economics, IUCN