The Relaunching of Negotiations on Green Goods and Services: Any Breakthrough in Sight?

The Bali agreement last December has given new hopes that the WTO is not dead.The recent announcement that negotiations on the reductions of tariffs on environmental goods are to resume starting from a list of goods identified by APEC members in September 2012 gives hope that the triple win outcome of the Doha round—for trade, for development and for the environment—might materialize, at least partly. Or does it? This note argues that unless the field of negotiations is widened, the initiative will not help much.