green products grow | Economic newspaper

With the development of the trade movement and its development and development to be supportive of sustainable development, the demands come for the need for an increasing global interest in the issue of green trade, as a result of the current challenges that the world is going through, especially the issue of climate change that imposed itself on the global reality, as the trend began to rethink production networks. consumption and supply chain sustainability, which has resulted in the need to identify practical ways in which trade can support the transition to a greener global economy. From this point of view comes the importance of the role that green trade plays in creating jobs, providing food, reducing poverty, or in other words achieving sustainable development.
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) defines green trade as the marketing activity that promotes sustainable actions to engage in non-polluting trade. The data indicates that in 2019, the value of green trade was about $1.3 trillion in the United States alone. It also created about 9.5 million full-time jobs, and the International Monetary Fund indicated that China could increase GDP by about 0.7 percent and create about 12 million jobs by 2027 if China made green investment and applied carbon taxes.
With regard to trade, the data stated that it is also not without environmental challenges, as emissions from international transportation of goods could increase by up to 160 percent by 2050, in the event that no action is taken, and companies face many challenges in this regard, as Companies can move their production to other places with lower standards. The ships, planes and trucks that transport goods around the world contribute to high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. It is worth noting that there are a group of commodities that are traded internationally, such as wheat, corn, iron, steel, and cement.
The World Trade Report confirms that the factors that helped the growth of trade included a significant solution to logistical problems, an increase in global freight capacity, and a decline in freight costs, as the container freight rate index in Shanghai returned to pre-epidemic levels, and the purchasing managers’ index in China increased by more than five points. Celsius since December 2022, indicating strong manufacturing and service activity.
This return came with the growth of global demand, which supported global trade during 2022 to reach 32 trillion dollars, and the volume of goods trade reached 25 trillion dollars, while the volume of trade in services reached seven trillion dollars. It is worth noting that the graph of trade in goods and services witnessed sharp fluctuations. During the year, while growth began weak in both sectors, it declined rapidly until the decline reached its maximum in the second quarter, with the decline in growth in services reaching negative 17 percent, and in goods to negative 15 percent, before returning to a very sharp rise towards the middle of the year. The growth of services reached 19 percent, while the growth of trade in goods reached 8 percent, but despite this sharp jump, the decline returned to dominate the situation until the end of the year, and growth loses all its momentum in both sectors, reaching close rates at 1 and 3 percent. percent by the end of the year, and these sharp fluctuations paint a lot of uncertainty about the state of global trade in the current year, as the global trade contraction in the last quarter of 2022 affected developing countries more, and their imports and exports decreased by 6 percent compared to the previous quarter b Meanwhile, exports from East Asian economies fell by 7 percent.
As we indicated, the fluctuations were the result of both positive and negative factors, but it is clear that the negative effects were more powerful and appeared clearly with the rise in interest rates at record levels and at a high speed since March 2022, as global trade began to stagnate and the services and commodities sectors were directly affected at the quarter The second, before it regained its growth, but the effect continued in a negative direction for all world trade until the end of the year.
The rise in energy, food and mineral prices, in addition to “geopolitical tensions, which included the conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, which led Russian exports to the largest decline among major countries during the last quarter of 2022, all of these factors combined, we see, have damaged the outlook for trade, which may It continues to darken the general picture of global trade, especially since the most least developed and low-income countries are either exposed to high risks or are already suffering from debt distress, and an explicit warning was issued in this regard that “the current record levels of global debt, along with high interest rates, will continue In negatively affecting macroeconomic conditions in many countries.
In front of this general negative picture, we notice some positive signs shown by the trade in green products and it is considered one of the positive aspects and good news for the planet, as the growth of green products reached 4 percent during the second half of 2022 to reach $ 1.9 trillion, but the good news is not in the growth Only but in the continuous upward trend of this growth. While global trade witnessed sharp fluctuations, as we indicated, and despite the negative trend that permeated all commodities, leading to expectations of stagnation for the current year, green commodities were going completely against the current, as growth was heading upwards without fluctuations. It is remarkable and promising that these results come only days after the United Nations issued a “final warning” of rising greenhouse gas emissions that push the planet to the brink of irreversible change. In front of this warning, the “UNCTAD” report goes far with expectations that green industries will flourish. And that international trade patterns become more relevant to the transition towards a greener global economy. And with some positive factors such as the prospects of avoiding a recession in the European Union and the United States, and the weakness of the dollar, which fell by about 7 percent between November 2022 and February 2023, which will lead to an increase in demand for traded goods.
Finally, it is imperative that international trade become more sustainable and contribute to the protection of the nature “capital” economies of the developing world. It is also possible to identify areas that can be supported by public and private action in developing countries in their efforts to reach environmentally friendly international markets.