Climate

22 November 2024 - Kudzai Makombe Andrew Aziz Hang Tran
Having achieved independence in 2002 and boasting a population of only 1.3 million people, Timor-Leste is the youngest and the second least-populated country in Southeast Asia. Despite this, the country has achieved significant progress in terms of human development, mainly driven by revenue from offshore oil and gas. According to the World Bank, the proportion of Timorese living in poverty declined from 50% in 2007 to an estimated 42% in 2014. Surplus oil and gas revenues go into a sovereign fund, the Timor-Leste Petroleum Fund, which was established in 2005. According to the World Bank's Timor-Leste Economic Report 2021, the country has also achieved significant declines in child and maternal mortality rates, increases in youth literacy, and improvements in energy and transport infrastructure.
Centrally located on the African continent, Chad shares a border with six countries. Chad is Africa’s fifth-largest country and its largest landlocked country. Due to its geography, Chad is reliant on neighbouring countries – such as Cameroon and Sudan – for access to seaport infrastructure. Chad’s history of conflict and its dependency on oil have resulted in a number of social, political, and economic challenges that disproportionately impact its poorest citizens. While the country’s main exports are oil and gold, agriculture is a crucial driver of the economy, with the majority of Chadians relying on subsistence farming and livestock rearing. Gum arabic, sesame, cattle, and cotton are Chad’s primary agricultural exports.
10 October 2024 - Simon Hess
From extreme storms to coastal flooding, the least developed countries (LDCs) are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change. More than two-thirds of climate-related disaster fatalities worldwide have occurred in these nations. This is why environmental sustainability is a cross-cutting issue that has been central to the trade capacity-building agenda of the EIF. The environment has not only been a cross-cutting priority for the EIF since the beginning of Phase Two, but it is also embedded in the EIF's strategic plan. Moreover, an indicator has been established to ensure that impact measurement considers environmental dimensions.
20 September 2024 - Kudzai Makombe Peter Donelan
Since 2013, the year after Vanuatu's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) has invested approximately USD 6.5 million in Vanuatu to strengthen institutional capacity for trade, revive the tourism sector and enhance trade facilitation.
15 August 2023 - Kudzai Makombe Peter Donelan
The partnership between The Gambia and the EIF began with country-led evidence‑based research and analysis to identify its pro-poor trade priorities. The resulting policy-guiding document – the 2007 Diagnostic Trade Integration Study (DTIS) – identified diversification and domestic production of goods and services in the areas of tourism, groundnuts and other agriculture products and fishing as sectors with the potential to spur sustainable development.
29 November 2022 - Aik Hoe Lim
Climate change also impacts trade. Extreme weather events can reduce productivity, increase costs and supply chain disruptions in the short term and alter countries' comparative advantages and specialization in long term. The WTO World Trade Report 2022 finds that a rise of 1°C has been found to reduce the annual growth of developing countries' exports by between 2.0 and 5.7 percentage points. 
22 November 2022
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.
15 November 2022 - Sofía Baliño
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.
8 November 2022 - Ratnakar Adhikari
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.
1 November 2022 - Daniel K. Kalinaki
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.
25 October 2022 - Simon Hess Marie-France Boucher
On 30th and 31st July, almost 300 mm of rain fell on Banjul and the capital region[HS1]  of The Gambia.
13 September 2022
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.
2 August 2022
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.
3 May 2022
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.
Isolated, Tuvalu turned to improving its internal trade. In October 2020 the Department of Business, with support from the Enhanced Integrated Framework, (EIF) launched the Tau Maketi (your market) initiative to help vulnerable small businesses play a more active role in Tuvalu’s domestic market and make up for diminished foreign demand.
Women are 14 times more likely to die from a climate disaster than men. Despite being face-to-face with the problem, women are often not part of the solution.
9 November 2021 - Alexander Kasterine
Alexander Kasterine explores how climate change concerns are changing market requirements for developing country food exporters
26 October 2021 - Peter Donelan
With climate change on everyone’s mind ahead of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), what are the key issues on the table for the world’s least developed countries (LDCs)?