UN climate change summit:Architects, engineers and companies involved in constructing green buildings would be among the major beneficiaries if tariffs and other barriers to trade in environmental goods and services were lifted by the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
In the meantime, the European Union and the United States are pressing for an immediate end to tariffs on solar panels, wind turbines and other technologies that would help in the battle against global warming - selected from a list recently compiled by the World Bank.
The EU-US proposal was discussed at the weekend by trade ministers from more than 30 countries at an "informal dialogue" in Bali, held to coincide with the UN climate change summit. It was the first time they had met specifically to discuss environmental issues.
Today and tomorrow, finance ministers will hold another round of talks here on carbon emissions trading and other finance-related measures. Increasingly, such instruments are coming to centre-stage in the effort to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson and US trade representative Susan Schwab, in a joint article entitled " Freeing up Green Trade" in the Wall Street Journallast Friday, said emissions reductions "cannot be achieved without uptake of green goods and green services.
"Any global attempt to tackle climate change will have to be supported by the development and deployment of green technologies as quickly and cheaply as possible to every part of the global economy", and technology transfer to developing countries was "crucial".
The World Bank has estimated that liberalising trade in climate-friendly technologies could see trade in this sector increase by up to 15 per cent a year - more than twice the current growth rate for global merchandise trade as a whole - and it could be worth up to $500 billion (€341 billion) annually. Calling for a "bold initiative" on this issue, Mr Mandelson and Ms Schwab said: "Given the shared responsibility to tackle climate change, there is no longer any good argument against a more open global market in environmental goods and services", such as wind and solar technology.
WTO director general Pascal Lamy and Indonesian trade minister Mari Pangestu, in a joint article in the International Herald Tribune on Saturday, said: "There is no doubt that the WTO can contribute immediately by opening markets to clean technology and services".
The WTO itself could not "dictate to the world the rules of the environmental game", they wrote. "It is only a multilateral solution to climate change that can send the right signal on how trading rules must adjust." Otherwise, there would be a risk of "confusion" on the issues.
At the trade ministers' talks in Bali, Mr Lamy cited arguments over the "carbon footprint" of trade, but said a flower grown in Kenya and air-freighted to Amsterdam actually had a lower footprint that an equivalent flower grown in a heated glasshouse in the Netherlands.
Insisting that the WTO was not "hostile" to the environment, as many green groups claim, he said trade was "not an enemy of the environment" and was optimistic that agreement to liberalise trade in environmental goods and services would be reached in the Doha round.
At a press conference yesterday, the Indonesian trade minister said there was a consensus at the two-day informal dialogue that climate change and international trade were both global issues and a recognition that environmental and trade objectives should be closely aligned.
"The aim is to deliver a win for trade, a win for the environment and a win for development," Ms Pangestu said. However, she stressed that the trade ministers in Bali were not negotiating a deal - that's being left to trade representatives seeking to conclude the Doha round in Geneva.
Speaking for the US, Ms Schwab said there were "multiple aspects of the Doha round that we believe will contribute positively to the challenges we face on the environment, such as the removal of agricultural subsidies" - apart from the dissemination of "climate-friendly technologies".
However, she said a balance needed to be struck between the transfer of technology to developing countries and the need to protect intellectual property rights - otherwise, companies involved in cutting-edge research and development would not have sufficient incentives to pursue it.
Ms Schwab also explained that the 41 products on the World Bank's list on which the EU and US are seeking the immediate removal of tariffs had not been selected because it was "self-serving"; products made by such "strongly competitive" countries as China and Mexico top the list.
Bloomberg adds: Trade officials clashed over the US and EU proposal to eliminate tariffs on certain environmental products and services.
The informal talks reignited opposition from some countries, particularly Brazil, to the US and EU proposal to scrap tariffs worldwide on solar, wind and related technologies to help curb global warming. Brazil argues the plan falls short because it doesn't include scrapping trade barriers for ethanol. The South American country is the world's biggest producer of ethanol, which is mixed with gasoline to stretch supplies and meet clean-air regulations.
"There is no agreement on the EU and US proposal," said Brazil's foreign minister Celso Amorim.