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2014 APEC High Level Roundtable on Green Development

Tianjin, People's Republic of China | 08 May 2014

The APEC High-Level Roundtable was held in Tianjin, China on 8 May 2014. Under the APEC 2014 priorities of "Advancing Regional Economic Integration'' and ''Promoting Innovative Development, Economic Reform and Growth'', we articulated our common vision of promoting green development and transition in the Asia-Pacific region in the context of our regional economic integration efforts.

In recent years, APEC has sought to tackle both economic and environmental challenges in pursuit of a green and sustainable economy, including through its leadership in liberalizing trade in environmental goods and services (EGS).

Recognizing the opportunities and challenges faced by the Asia-Pacific region, we agree that further efforts and cooperation in APEC are necessary to advance work to enhance capabilities of economies to support green and sustainable growth in all of our economies.

To this end, we emphasize the importance of sharing best practices and continuing our efforts to facilitate and liberalize trade in EGS and promote green and sustainable growth.

We will assess how existing APEC work streams, such as the Committee on Trade and Investment’s work on Supply Chain Connectivity and EGS will support the private sector in its efforts to develop greener supply chains and how to link APEC economies to cooperate on green supply chains, so as to push forward green growth and sustainable development in the Asia-Pacific region. We will work closely with the private sector to ensure that any future work by APEC in this area adds value to these efforts.

We welcome the work being done by individual APEC economies with respect to green growth, including promoting green financing investment and trade, sustainable production and consumption, capacity building and joint research, green technologies, sustainable government procurement and certification and mutual recognition of environment labeling schemes, and corporate social responsibility, etc, and emphasize that such work should be carried out in a WTO consistent manner. We welcome Tianjin’s contribution in setting up a green supply chain pilot center open to interested economies.

Our work toward a seamless regional economy underpinned by green and sustainable growth is only in the beginning stages. We believe that this roundtable can contribute to our common goal towards green and sustainable growth. We recommend that our Leaders send a strong message of support for future APEC work to support green growth and sustainable development across the region.