Environmental Goods and Services: Issues for Negotiations for India

Liberalisation of trade in environmental goods and services (EGS) has become a key issue at the complex and rapidly developing trade and environment interface. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) at its fourth Ministerial meeting in Doha in 2001, decided to negotiate opening the market for EGS and set out a commitment to the reduction/elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers to EGS. This paper aims at examining select issues for negotiations in the area of EGS against the background of the Doha Ministerial Declaration. Different concepts of environmental goods and environmental services, the narrower and the broader definitions, are examined and the OECD and APEC lists are compared and categories of environmental goods are highlighted. The paper provides an overview of India’s EGS industry and market, the existing tariffs on environmental goods and the importance of these products in India’s total exports. It identifies environmental goods in which India has comparative advantage and discusses the potential for environmental services. It highlights the issues which can be considered for the negotiating agenda by developing countries in general and India in particular.