Countries with high environmental credentials like Bhutan should be supported to trade with an automatic recognition and prioritization of their exports as clean and green. This will be a big boost to build productive capacity and help increase climate and trade ambition.

Along with the damage posed to ecosystem and human health, climate change is already affecting what and how countries trade with one another. For instance, changing temperatures and weather patterns have an impact on crop yields, and therefore agricultural trade. Climate change can cause severe and costly disruptions to trade-related infrastructure, as sea level rises threaten seaports and rising temperatures affect and degrade railways. Tourism is another sector that is both crucial for trade and where changing weather conditions are affecting where people travel and the infrastructure that tourism relies on.

While leveraging AFT to mobilize climate finance is an imperative for LDCs, this cannot be achieved without improved government-wide coordination, policy reforms to improve business environments, capacity building to attract and retain investment as well as contribution of resources and expertise to mobilize additional funding. Such an approach, while facilitating collective engagement to unleash the power of partnership, can make a difference to ensure that climate change adaptation and mitigation needs of LDCs are adequately funded.

Improving productivity from the artisanal subsector, which provides the raw material for the industrial processing plants, will increase the amount of product available. Higher standards and value addition will increase the export earnings, employment and income for Gambians, and raise the fishing sector’s share of GDP. Doing it in a climate-smart manner will ensure that this growth is sustainable.

Vanuatu has emerged as a trailblazer in the Asia‑Pacific region in leveraging the benefits of trade facilitation through the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)’s Automated System for Customs Data (ASYCUDA) program. For over 40 years, ASYCUDA, which is UNCTAD’s largest technical assistance program, has helped customs offices around the world clear goods faster and increase the pace of trade. Vanuatu is one of only seven ASYCUDA countries worldwide, and the only one in the Pacific region, running a single-window system using ASYCUDA.

In 2022, WTO members have the opportunity to move forward on an aid for trade agenda that supports LDCs to tackle pressing challenges at the intersection of trade and sustainability. Given the massive trade-related challenges facing LDCs, the huge gap between needs and available support for a just transition to sustainable trade, and the urgency, scale, and impact of intersecting environmental crises in LDCs, mobilizing additional resources, investments, and partnerships is vital.

Trade is a critical part of on the ground adaptation efforts that must also be considered, specifically local trade amongst small and medium enterprises which are impacted head-on by climate emergencies. We are seeing communities already vulnerable to shocks affected not only in terms of their resources getting destroyed or depleted but also due to a lack of support systems when this happens.