This paper, produced by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, explores the benefits and limitations of a decision by APEC countries to reduce tariffs to 5% or less on a list of 54 environmental goods. The paper concludes that: only a relatively small number of “environmental products” on the APEC list will benefit from tariff reduction, certain countries will be affected more than others and that further works needs to be carried out on tariff classification, subsidies and non-tariff barriers. Overall, the APEC tariff-reduction pledge is found to be politically significant because it aims to effectively reduce, within a given period, applied tariff reductions for a multilaterally agreed list of environmental goods.
