UN Forum on sustainability standards to be launched soon

Delegates at the just-ended UNCTAD XIII quadrennial conference were briefed on a soon-to-be-launched United Nations Forum on Sustainability Standards (UNFSS).

Five UN bodies – UNCTAD, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), and the International Trade Centre (ITC) have come together and plan an imminent launch of the UNFSS.

The Forum will be a platform for providing information, analysis, and capacity-building assistance on these standards, with a particular focus on their potential value as tools for developing countries to achieve their sustainable development goals and boost production and exports of sustainably produced products.

The Forum is also expected to address the potential trade or development obstacles these standards may create with particular emphasis on their impact on small-scale producers and in less-developed countries.

The UNFSS is designed to encourage dialogue, exchange knowledge, and provide a forum for developing country decision-makers to engage with key target groups in the business, research and non-governmental organization (NGO) communities.

Activities will focus on four thematic areas: “meta-governance” of private standards; overcoming weaknesses in developing countries in technical, human, institutional, and infra-structural areas related to VSS; devising supportive policies and achieving coherence between those policies; and fostering public-private dialogues and partnerships.

By Ekow Quandzie